bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Molecular detection of Rickettsia in fleas from micromammals in Chile
Authors: Salas Lucila Moreno , Carniglia Mario Espinoza , Schmeisser Nicol Lizama , Fuentes Luis Gonzalo Torres , Fuente María Carolina Silva de la , Lareschi Marcela , Acuña Daniel González 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background: Rickettsial diseases are considered important in public health due to their dispersal capacity determined by the particular characteristics of their reservoirs and / or vectors. Among the latter, fleas play an important role, since the vast majority of species parasitize wild and invasive rodents, so their detection is relevant to be able to monitor potential emerging diseases. The aim of this study was to detect, characterize, and compare Rickettsia spp. from the fleas of micromammals in areas with different human population densities in Chile.Methods: The presence of Rickettsia spp. was evaluated by standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequencing in 1,315 fleas collected from 1,512 micromammals in 29 locations, with different human population densities in Chile. A generalized linear models (GLM) was used to identify the variables that may explain Rickettsia prevalence in fleas. Results: DNA of Rickettsia spp. was identified in 13.2% (174 of 1,315) of fleas tested. Fifteen flea species were found to be Rickettsia-positive. The prevalence of Rickettsia spp. was higher in winter, semi-arid region and natural areas, and the infections in fleas varied between species of fleas. The prevalence of Rickettsia among flea species ranged from 0%–35.1%. Areas of lower human density have the highest prevalence of Rickettsia. The phylogenetic tree shows two well-differentiated clades. Rickettsia bellii is positioned as basal in a clade. Another clade is subdivided into two subclades, and are related to Rickettsia of spotted fever group.Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first report of the occurrence and molecular characterization of Rickettsia spp. in 15 species of fleas of micromammals in Chile. In this study, fleas were detected carrying Rickettsia DNA with zoonotic potential, mainly in villages and natural areas of Chile. Considering that there are differences in the prevalence of Rickettsia in fleas associated with different factors, more investigations are needed to further understand the ecology of Rickettsia in fleas and their implications for human health.
DjinniChip: Evaluation of a novel molecular rapid diagnostic device for the detection of Chlamydia trachomatis in trachoma-endemic areas
Authors: Derrick Tamsyn R , Sandetskaya Natalia , Pickering Harry , Kölsch Andreas , Ramadhani Athumani , Mafuru Elias , Massae Patrick , Malisa Aiweda , Mtuy Tara , Burton Matthew J , Holland Martin J , Kuhlmeier Dirk 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background

The clinical signs of active trachoma are often present in the absence of ocular Chlamydia trachomatis infection, particularly following mass drug administration. Treatment decisions following impact surveys and in post-control surveillance for communities are currently based on the prevalence of clinical signs, which may result in further unnecessary distribution of mass antibiotic treatment and the increased spread of macrolide resistance alleles in ‘off-target’ bacterial species. We therefore developed a simple, fast, low cost diagnostic assay (DjinniChip) for diagnosis of ocular C. trachomatis for use by trachoma control programmes.

Methods

The study was conducted in London, Germany and Tanzania. For clinical testing in Tanzania, specimens from a sample of 350 children between the ages of 7 to15 years, which were part of a longitudinal cohort that began in February 2012 were selected. Two ocular swabs were taken from the right eye. The second swab was collected dry, kept cool in the field and archived at -80 o C before sample lysis for DjinniChip detection and parallel nucleic acid purification and detection/quantification by qPCR assay.

Results

Djinnichip was able to reliably detect >10 copies of C. trachomatis per test and correctly identified 7/10 Quality Control for Molecular Diagnostics C. trachomatis panel samples, failing to detect 3 positive samples with genome equivalent amounts >10 copies. Djinnichip performed well across a range of typical trachoma field conditions and when used by lay personnel using a series of mock samples. In the laboratory in Tanzania, using clinical samples the sensitivity and specificity of DjinniChip for C. trachomatis was 66% (95% CI 51–78) and 94.8 (95% CI 91–97%) with an overall accuracy of 90.1 (95% CI 86.4 – 93).

Conclusions

DjinniChip performance is extremely promising, particularly its ability to detect low concentrations of C. trachomatis and its usability in field conditions. The DjinniChip requires further development to reduce inhibition and advance toward a closed system. DjinniChip results did not vary between local laboratory results and typical trachoma field settings, illustrating its potential for use in low-resource areas to prevent unnecessary rounds of MDA and to monitor for C. trachomatis recrudescence.
Metabolic characterization of aggressive breast cancer cells exhibiting invasive phenotype: Impact of non-cytotoxic doses of 2-DG on diminishing invasiveness
Authors: Fujita Mayumi , Imadome Kaori , Somasundaram Veena , Kawanishi Miki , Karasawa Kumiko , Wink David A. 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background

Metabolic reprogramming is being recognized as a fundamental hallmark of cancer, and efforts to identify drugs that can target cancer metabolism are underway. In this study, we used human breast cancer (BC) cell lines and established their invading phenotype (INV) collected from transwell inserts to compare metabolome differences and evaluate prognostic significance of the metabolome in aggressive BC invasiveness.

Methods

The invasiveness of seven human BC cell lines were compared using the transwell invasion assay. Among these, INV was collected from SUM149, which exhibited the highest invasiveness. Levels of metabolites in INV were compared with those of whole cultured SUM149 cells (WCC) using CE-TOFMS. The impact of glycolysis in INV was determined by glucose uptake assay using fluorescent derivative of glucose (2-NBDG), and significance of glycolysis, or tricarboxylic acid (TCA) and electron transport chain (ETC) in the invasive process were further determined in aggressive BC cell lines, SUM149, MDA-MB-231, HCC1937, using invasion assays in the presence or absence of inhibitors of glycolysis, TCA cycle or ETC.

Results

SUM149 INV sub-population exhibited a persistent hyperinvasive phenotype. INV were hyper-glycolytic with increased glucose (2-NBDG) uptake; diminished glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) levels but elevated pyruvate and lactate, along with higher expression of phosphorylated-pyruvate dehydrogenase (pPDH) compared to WCC. Notably, inhibiting of glycolysis with lower doses of 2-DG (1 mM), non-cytotoxic to MDA-MB-231 and HCC1937, was effective in diminishing invasiveness of aggressive BC cell lines. In contrast, 3-Nitropropionic acid (3-NA), an inhibitor of succinate dehydrogenase, the enzyme that oxidizes succinate to fumarate in TCA cycle, and functions as complex II of ETC, had no significant effect on their invasiveness, although levels of TCA metabolites or detection of mitochondrial membrane potential with JC-1 staining, indicated that INV cells originally had functional TCA cycles and membrane potential.

Conclusions

Hyper-glycolytic phenotype of invading cells caters to rapid energy production required for invasion while TCAcycle/ETC cater to cellular energy needs for sustenance in aggressive BC. Lower, non-cytotoxic doses of 2-DG can hamper invasion and can potentially be used as an adjuvant with other anti-cancer therapies without the usual side-effects associated with cytotoxic doses.
Two Stepped Majority Voting for Efficient EEG based Emotion Classification
Authors: Ismael aras Masood , Alçin Ömer F , Abdalla Karmand H , sengur Abdulkadir k 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
In this paper, a novel approach that is based on two-stepped majority voting is proposed for efficient EEG based emotion classification. Emotion recognition is important for human-machine interactions. Facial-features and body-gestures based approaches have been generally proposed for emotion recognition. Recently, EEG based approaches become more popular in emotion recognition. In the proposed approach, the raw EEG signals are initially low-pass filtered for noise removal and band-pass filters are used for rhythms extraction. For each rhythm, the best performed EEG channels are determined based on wavelet-based entropy features and fractal dimension based features. The k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier is used in classification. The best five EEG channels are used in majority voting for getting the final predictions for each EEG rhythm. In the second majority voting step, the predictions from all rhythms are used to get a final prediction. The DEAP dataset is used in experiments and classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity are used for performance evaluation metrics. The experiments are carried out to classify the emotions into two binary classes such as high valence (HV) vs low valence (LV) and high arousal (HA) vs low arousal (LA). The experiments show that 86.3% HV vs LV discrimination accuracy and 85.0% HA vs LA discrimination accuracy is obtained. The obtained results are also compared with some of the existing methods. The comparisons show that the proposed method has potential in the use of EEG based emotion classification.
Prognostic factors in patients admitted to an urban teaching hospital with COVID-19 infection
Authors: Maguire Donogh , Woods Marylynne , Richards Conor , Dolan Ross , Veitch Jesse Wilson , Sim Wei MJ , Kemmett Olivia EH , Milton David C , Randall Sophie LW , Bui Ly D , Goldmann Nicola , Cameron Allan , Laird Barry , Talwar Dinesh , Godber Ian , Davidson Alan , McMillan Donald C 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
BackgroundSevere COVID-19 infection results in a systemic inflammatory response (SIRS). This SIRS response shares similarities to the changes observed during the peri-operative period that are recognised to be associated with the development of multiple organ failure. MethodsElectronic patient records for patients who were admitted to an urban teaching hospital during the initial 7-week period of the COVID-19 pandemic in Glasgow, U.K. (17th March 2020 - 1st May 2020) were examined for routine clinical, laboratory and clinical outcome data. Age, sex, BMI and documented evidence of COVID-19 infection at time of discharge or death certification were considered minimal criteria for inclusion.ResultsOf the 224 patients who fulfilled the criteria for inclusion, 52 (23%) had died at 30-days following admission. COVID-19 related respiratory failure (75%) and multiorgan failure (12%) were the commonest causes of death recorded. Age>70 years (p<0.001), past medical history of cognitive impairment (p<0.001), previous delirium (p<0.001), clinical frailty score>3 (p<0.001), hypertension (p<0.05), heart failure (p<0.01), national early warning score (NEWS) >4 (p<0.01), positive CXR (p<0.01), and subsequent positive COVID-19 swab (p<0.001) were associated with 30-day mortality. CRP>80 mg/L (p<0.05), albumin <35g/L (p<0.05), peri-operative Glasgow Prognostic Score (poGPS) (p<0.05), lymphocytes <1.5 109/l (p<0.05), neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (p<0.001), haematocrit (<0.40 L/L (male) / <0.37 L/L (female)) (p<0.01), urea>7.5 mmol/L (p<0.001), creatinine >130 mmol/L (p<0.05) and elevated urea: albumin ratio (<0.001) were also associated with 30-day mortality.On multivariate analysis, age >70 years (O.R. 3.9, 95% C.I. 1.4 – 8.2, p<0.001), past medical history of heart failure (O.R. 3.3, 95% C.I. 1.2 – 19.3, p<0.05), NEWS >4 (O.R. 2.4, 95% C.I. 1.1 – 4.4, p<0.05), positive initial CXR (O.R. 0.4, 95% C.I. 0.2-0.9, p<0.05) and poGPS (O.R. 2.3, 95% C.I. 1.1 – 4.4, p<0.05) remained independently associated with 30-day mortality. Among those patients who tested PCR COVID-19 positive (n=122), age >70 years (O.R. 4.7, 95% C.I. 2.0 - 11.3, p<0.001), past medical history of heart failure (O.R. 4.4, 95% C.I. 1.2 – 20.5, p<0.05) and poGPS (O.R. 2.4, 95% C.I. 1.1- 5.1, p<0.05) remained independently associated with 30-days mortality.ConclusionAge > 70 years and severe systemic inflammation as measured by the peri-operative Glasgow Prognostic Score are independently associated with 30-day mortality among patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 infection.
Prevalence, predictors, and mortality of bloodstream infections due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in patients with malignancy: systemic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Li Zhouqi , Zhuang Hemu , Wang Guannan , Wang Hui , Dong Ying 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background: Cancer patients are more likely to develop and die of bloodstream infection (BSI) than noncancer patients. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is associated with immense mortality and economic burden worldwide, is not covered by the recommended initial antibiotic therapy for cancer patients with BSI. This systemic review was performed to estimate the global methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) prevalence among bacteremia in patients with malignancy, and further study the predictors and mortality of cancer patients with MRSA bacteremia.Methods: The PubMed and EMBASE databases were searched for studies published from Jan. 2000 to Mar. 2020 that provided primary data on the prevalence, predictors, or mortality of MRSA bacteremia in cancer patients. A random-effects model meta-analysis was performed to estimate the pooled prevalence of MRSA with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs).Results: The pooled prevalence of MRSA was 3% (95% CI 2–5%) among all bloodstream infections (BSIs) and 44% (95% CI 32–57%) among S. aureus bacteremia in cancer patients. Based on geographical stratification, the pooled prevalence was 5% in Africa (95% CI 1–14%), 1% in Americas (95% CI 1–2%), 2% in Europe (95% CI 1–4%), 4% in Western Pacific (95% CI 2–7%), 8% in South-east Asia (95% CI 4–14%) and 0% in Eastern Mediterranean (95% CI 0–3%). No significant temporal change in MRSA rates was detected in this analysis (R2 = 0.06; P=0.24). Predictors for MRSA BSIs among cancer patients were identified by comparison with their methicillin-susceptible counterparts, and they were mainly related to healthcare-associated infections and immunosuppression. Finally, the 60-day mortality in adult cancer patients with MRSA BSIs was reported to be 12%, and the 6-month overall mortality was 43.2%, with community-onset infection, secondary BSI, and vancomycin MIC≥2g/mL being the risk factors for mortality.Conclusions: Although the prevalence of MRSA BSIs among cancer patients is relatively low, it did not decline over time as MRSA BSIs in the general hospital population and the high mortality rate was related to MRSA BSIs in patients with malignancy.
Extracellular vesicles from the apoplastic fungal wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici
Authors: Hill Erin H , Solomon Peter 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background: The fungal pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici is a significant constraint to wheat production in temperate cropping regions around the world. Despite its agronomic impacts, the mechanisms allowing the pathogen to asymptomatically invade and grow in the apoplast of wheat leaves before causing extensive host cell death remain elusive. Given recent evidence of extracellular vesicles (EVs) – secreted, membrane-bound nanoparticles containing molecular cargo – being implicated in extracellular communication between plants and fungal pathogen, we have initiated an in vitro investigation of EVs from this apoplastic fungal wheat pathogen. We aimed to isolate EVs from Z. tritici broth cultures and examine their protein composition in relation to the soluble protein in the culture filtrate and to existing fungal EV proteomes.Results: Zymoseptoria tritici EVs were isolated from broth culture filtrates using differential ultracentrifugation (DUC) and examined with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA). Z. tritici EVs were observed as a heterogeneous population of particles, with most between 50 – 250 nm. These particles were found in abundance in the culture filtrates of viable Z. tritici cultures, but not heat-killed cultures incubated for an equivalent time and of comparable biomass. Bottom-up proteomic analysis using LC-MS/MS, followed by stringent filtering revealed 240 Z. tritici EV proteins. These proteins were distinct from soluble proteins identified in Z. tritici culture filtrates, but were similar to proteins identified in EVs from other fungi, based on sequence similarity analyses. Notably, a putative marker protein recently identified in Candida albicans EVs was also consistently detected in Z. tritici EVs.Conclusion: We have shown EVs can be isolated from the devastating fungal wheat pathogen Z. tritici and are similar to protein composition to previously characterised fungal EVs. EVs from human pathogenic fungi are implicated in virulence, but the role of EVs in the interaction of phytopathogenic fungi and their hosts is unknown. These in vitro analyses provide a basis for expanding investigations of Z. tritici EVs in planta, to examine their involvement in the infection process of this apoplastic wheat pathogen and more broadly, advance understanding of noncanonical secretion in filamentous plant pathogens.
Epidemiological Survey of the Elderly Removable Denture Subsidy Program in Taiwan, 2015–2018: A Cross-sectional Study
Authors: CHU KUAN-YU 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background: Taiwan’s population is aging rapidly. Elderly adults with missing teeth require dental rehabilitation to maintain good oral health, which is important for proper nutrition and overall health and life quality. Removable dentures are an economical option for these individuals, for which many county and municipal governments in Taiwan provide subsidies. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated the demographic characteristics of older Taiwanese adults who received a removable denture subsidy, as well as the type of denture obtained and related factors. Methods: We administered a survey and conducted oral examinations among elderly patients of the Geriatric Dentistry clinic of Taoyuan Hospital who had participated in a removable prosthesis subsidy program during 2015–2018. We investigated patients’ demographic characteristics using descriptive statistics and used logistic regression to determine whether age and sex were independent predictors of edentulous status and a need for complete dentures. We also examined the relationships between denture type and related factors. Results: In total, 423 participants (mean age 76.3 years, standard deviation 7.55; 54.4% men) completed the subsidy application process and obtained a removable dental prosthesis. In total, 150 (35.5%) participants applied for single-arch restoration. A removable partial denture (RPD) was the most common type for single jaws, and an RPD and full dentures were the most common for both arches. Logistic regression indicated an effect of age, but not sex, on denture type and edentulous status among 273 subsidy applicants for both arches (odds ratio: 1.041 per year of age, 95% confidence interval: 1.004–1.080, P=0.032). Conclusions: This study confirms that there is a great need for dental rehabilitation among elderly Taiwanese adults. County and municipal governments in Taiwan should regularly review and improve dental subsidy programs, to lift barriers to obtaining removable dentures among older people who need them.
The Changing Epidemiology of Dog Bite Injuries in the United States, 2005-2018
Authors: Tuckel Peter , Milczarski William 
Published: September 2020

Abstract
Background: In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, dog bites ranked as the 13th leading cause of nonfatal emergency department visits in the United States. As dog ownership spirals upwards in the United States, it is important to continue to monitor the epidemiology of dog bite injuries. This study provides contemporary data on the incidence of dog bites injuries in the United States and in New York and profiles individuals who have been treated for dog bites in emergency departments. The study also examines the demographic correlates of the rate of injuries at the neighborhood level in New York City and maps the rate in each neighborhood.Methods: At the national level, the study examines longitudinal data on dog bite injuries from 2005-2018 gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For New York, the study analyzes data for 2005-2018 collected by the New York State Department of Health. A negative binomial regression analysis was performed on the state data to measure the simultaneous effects of demographic variables on the incidence of dog-related injuries. A thematically shaded map of the rate of dog bite injuries in New York City’s neighborhoods was created to identify neighborhoods with higher-than-average concentration of injuries. Results: In both the United States and New York the rate of dog-bite injuries increased from 2005 to 2011 and then underwent a significant decline. Injuries due to dog bites, however, still remain a sizable public health problem. Injuries are more prevalent among school-age children, inhabitants of less-densely populated areas, and residents of poorer neighborhoods. In New York City, poorer neighborhoods are also associated with fewer dogs being spayed or neutered. Conclusions: To reduce the rate of dog bite injuries, prevention programs – particularly those which center on teaching the dangers of canine interactions with humans – should be targeted at children. Dog bite injuries tend to be clustered in identifiable neighborhoods. Dog bite prevention programs and stricter enforcement of dog laws can target these neighborhoods.