Food contamination by pathogenic microorganisms has been a serious public health problem and a cause of huge economic losses worldwide. Foodborne pathogenic
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
) ...contamination, such as that with
E. coli
O157 and O104, is very common, even in developed countries. Bacterial contamination may occur during any of the steps in the farm-to-table continuum from environmental, animal, or human sources and cause foodborne illness. To understand the causes of the foodborne outbreaks by
E. coli
and food-contamination prevention measures, we collected and investigated the past 10 years’ worldwide reports of foodborne
E. coli
contamination cases. In the first half of this review article, we introduce the infection and symptoms of five major foodborne diarrheagenic
E. coli
pathotypes: enteropathogenic
E. coli
(EPEC), Shiga toxin-producing
E. coli
/enterohemorrhagic
E. coli
(STEC/EHEC),
Shigella
/enteroinvasive
E. coli
(EIEC), enteroaggregative
E. coli
(EAEC), and enterotoxigenic
E. coli
(ETEC). In the second half of this review article, we introduce the foodborne outbreak cases caused by
E. coli
in natural foods and food products. Finally, we discuss current developments that can be applied to control and prevent bacterial food contamination.
Bacteriocins are a kind of ribosomal synthesized antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria, which can kill or inhibit bacterial strains closely-related or non-related to produced bacteria, but will ...not harm the bacteria themselves by specific immunity proteins. Bacteriocins become one of the weapons against microorganisms due to the specific characteristics of large diversity of structure and function, natural resource, and being stable to heat. Many recent studies have purified and identified bacteriocins for application in food technology, which aims to extend food preservation time, treat pathogen disease and cancer therapy, and maintain human health. Therefore, bacteriocins may become a potential drug candidate for replacing antibiotics in order to treat multiple drugs resistance pathogens in the future. This review article summarizes different types of bacteriocins from bacteria. The latter half of this review focuses on the potential applications in food science and pharmaceutical industry.
Some oral probiotics have been shown to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and decrease mortality effectively in preterm very low birth weight (PVLBW) infants. However, it is unclear whether a ...single probiotic or a mixture of probiotics is most effective for the prevention of NEC.
A meta-analysis was conducted by reviewing the most up to date literature to investigate whether multiple strains probiotics are more effective than a single strain in reducing NEC and death in PVLBW infants.
Relevant studies were identified by searches of the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane CENTRAL databases, from 2001 to 2016.
The inclusion criteria were randomized controlled trials of any enteral probiotic supplementation that was initiated within the first 7 days and continued for at least 14 days in preterm infants (≤ 34 weeks' gestation) and/or those of a birth weight ≤1500 g.
A total of 25 trials (n = 7345 infants) were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis using a fixed-effects model. Multiple strains probiotics were associated with a marked reduction in the incidence of NEC, with a pooled OR of 0.36 (95% CI, 0.24-0.53; P < .00001). Single strain probiotic using Lactobacillus species had a borderline effect in reducing NEC (OR of 0.60; 95% CI 0.36-1.0; P = .05), but not mortality. Multiple strains probiotics had a greater effectiveness in reducing mortality and were associated with a pooled OR of 0.58 (95% CI, 0.43-0.79; P = .0006). Trials using single strain of Bifidobacterium species and Saccharomyces boulardii did not reveal any beneficial effects in terms of reducing NEC or mortality.
This updated report found that multiple strains probiotics appear to be the most feasible and effective strategy for the prevention of NEC and reduction of mortality in PVLBW neonates. Further clinical trials should focus on which probiotic combinations are most effective.
Chemical and enzymatic barriers in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract hamper the oral delivery of many labile drugs. The GI epithelium also contributes to poor permeability for numerous drugs. Drugs ...with poor aqueous solubility have difficulty dissolving in the GI tract, resulting in low bioavailability. Nanomedicine provides an opportunity to improve the delivery efficiency of orally administered drugs. Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) are categorized as a new generation of lipid nanoparticles consisting of a complete solid lipid matrix. SLNs used for oral administration offer several benefits over conventional formulations, including increased solubility, enhanced stability, improved epithelium permeability and bioavailability, prolonged half-life, tissue targeting, and minimal side effects. The nontoxic excipients and sophisticated material engineering of SLNs tailor the controllable physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles for GI penetration via mucosal or lymphatic transport. In this review, we highlight the recent progress in the development of SLNs for disease treatment. Recent application of oral SLNs includes therapies for cancers, central nervous system-related disorders, cardiovascular-related diseases, infection, diabetes, and osteoporosis. In addition to drugs that may be active cargos in SLNs, some natural compounds with pharmacological activity are also suitable for SLN encapsulation to enhance oral bioavailability. In this article, we systematically introduce the concepts and amelioration mechanisms of the nanomedical techniques for drug- and natural compound-loaded SLNs.
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•SLNs are nanosystems for the delivery of drugs with controlled release kinetics.•We highlight the recent progress in the study of oral SLNs for disease treatment.•SLNs are developed by solid lipids and emulsifiers generally recognized as safe.•Both drugs and natural compounds are suitable to be orally delivered by SLNs.
In this letter, a WO 3 nanoparticle gas sensor was fabricated using an ICP-assisted hot wire system. The results of experiments indicated that the sensitivity became smaller when the measured ...temperature increased. It was also found that the WO 3 nanoparticle gas sensor prepared at an annealing temperature of 400°C had the greatest sensitivity. The measured sensitivity for a micro-electromechanical system type WO 3 nanoparticle gas sensor was found to be around 3.22, 3.91, 5.02, 7.52, 11.68, and 15.93 when the operating temperature of the micro-heater was 150°C and the concentration of injected NO gas was 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, and 350 ppb, respectively.
Efficient detection of stealthy malware attacks in suspicious files is very challenging as dynamic malware analysis is time consuming. This paper proposes a virtual time control mechanics-based ...method to overcome the challenge. The proposed method utilizes a modified Xen hypervisor, in which a virtual clock source is generated according to a predefined speed ratio, such that sandbox systems running on the modified hypervisor can be accelerated. Thus, it does not modify operating system kernels nor intercept system function calls, and is therefore compatible with various operating systems. Further, it utilizes an entropy-based measure that adjusts its execution time according to various malware inputs as an early termination criterion. The results of experiments conducted to verify the efficacy of the proposed method indicate that it speeds up the system timer and significantly increases the logged record size by up to 42% or obtains the same log size within a shorter period compared with conventional sandboxes. Thus, the proposed virtual time control mechanics-based method efficiently detects nontrivial anomalous codes that may be neglected by conventional sandboxing techniques.
Negative selection-based circulating tumor cell (CTC) isolation is believed valuable to harvest more native, and in particular all possible CTCs without biases relevant to the properties of surface ...antigens on the CTCs. Under such a cell isolation strategy, however, the CTC purity is normally compromised. To address this issue, this study reports the integration of optically-induced-dielectrophoretic (ODEP) force-based cell manipulation, and a laminar flow regime in a microfluidic platform for the isolation of untreated, and highly pure CTCs after conventional negative selection-based CTC isolation. In the design, six sections of moving light-bar screens were continuously and simultaneously exerted in two parallel laminar flows to concurrently separate the cancer cells from the leukocytes based on their size difference and electric properties. The separated cell populations were further partitioned, delivered, and collected through the two flows. With this approach, the cancer cells can be isolated in a continuous, effective, and efficient manner. In this study, the operating conditions of ODEP for the manipulation of prostate cancer (PC-3) and human oral cancer (OEC-M1) cells, and leukocytes with minor cell aggregation phenomenon were first characterized. Moreover, performances of the proposed method for the isolation of cancer cells were experimentally investigated. The results showed that the presented CTC isolation scheme was able to isolate PC-3 cells or OEC-M1 cells from a leukocyte background with high recovery rate (PC-3 cells: 76-83%, OEC-M1 cells: 61-68%), and high purity (PC-3 cells: 74-82%, OEC-M1 cells: 64-66%) (set flow rate: 0.1 μl min(-1) and sample volume: 1 μl). The latter is beyond what is currently possible in the conventional CTC isolations. Moreover, the viability of isolated cancer cells was evaluated to be as high as 94 ± 2%, and 95 ± 3% for the PC-3, and OEC-M1 cells, respectively. Furthermore, the isolated cancer cells were also shown to preserve their proliferative capability. As a whole, this study has presented an ODEP-based microfluidic platform that is capable of isolating CTCs in a continuous, label-free, cell-friendly, and particularly highly pure manner. All these traits are found particularly meaningful for exploiting the harvested CTCs for the subsequent cell-based, or biochemical assays.
The goal was to investigate the efficacy of orally administered probiotics in preventing necrotizing enterocolitis for very low birth weight preterm infants.
A prospective, blinded, randomized, ...multicenter controlled trial was conducted at 7 NICUs in Taiwan, to evaluate the beneficial effects of probiotics in necrotizing enterocolitis among very low birth weight infants (birth weight: <1500 g). Very low birth weight infants who survived to start enteral feeding were eligible and were assigned randomly to 2 groups after parental informed consent was obtained. Infants in the study group were given Bifidobacterium bifidum and Lactobacillus acidophilus, added to breast milk or mixed feeding (breast milk and formula), twice daily for 6 weeks. Infants in the control group were fed with breast milk or mixed feeding. The clinicians caring for the infants were blinded to the group assignment. The primary outcome measurement was death or necrotizing enterocolitis (Bell's stage >or=2).
Four hundred thirty-four infants were enrolled, 217 in the study group and 217 in the control group. The incidence of death or necrotizing enterocolitis (stage >or=2) was significantly lower in the study group (4 of 217 infants vs 20 of 217 infants). The incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis (stage >or=2) was lower in the study group, compared with the control group (4 of 217 infants vs 14 of 217 infants). No adverse effect, such as sepsis, flatulence, or diarrhea, was noted.
Probiotics, in the form of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, fed enterally to very low birth weight preterm infants for 6 weeks reduced the incidence of death or necrotizing enterocolitis.
We evaluated the efficacy of probiotics in reducing the incidence and severity of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants.
A prospective, masked, randomized control ...trial was conducted to evaluate the beneficial effects of probiotics in reducing the incidence and severity of NEC among VLBW (<1500 g) infants. VLBW infants who started to fed enterally and survived beyond the seventh day after birth were eligible for the trial. They were randomized into 2 groups after parental informed consents were obtained. The infants in the study group were fed with Infloran (Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium infantis) with breast milk twice daily until discharged. Infants in the control group were fed with breast milk alone. The clinicians caring for the infants were blinded to the group assignment. The primary outcome was death or NEC (>or= stage 2).
Three hundred sixty-seven infants were enrolled: 180 in the study group and 187 in the control group. The demographic and clinical variables were similar in both groups. The incidence of death or NEC (>or= stage 2) was significantly lower in the study group (9 of 180 vs 24 of 187). The incidence of NEC (>or= stage 2) was also significantly lower in the study when compared with the control group (2 of 180 vs 10 of 187). There were 6 cases of severe NEC (Bell stage 3) in the control group and none in the study group. None of the positive blood culture grew Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium species.
Infloran as probiotics fed enterally with breast milk reduces the incidence and severity of NEC in VLBW infants.
About 40% of the world's population is overweight or obese and exist at risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). Obesity is a leading pathogenic factor for developing insulin resistance ...(IR). It is well established that IR and a progressive decline in functional β-cell mass are hallmarks of developing T2D. In order to mitigate the global prevalence of T2D, we must carefully select the appropriate animal models to explore the cellular and molecular mechanisms of T2D, and to optimize novel therapeutics for their safe use in humans. Flavonoids, a group of polyphenols, have drawn great interest for their various health benefits, and have been identified in naturally occurring anti-diabetic compounds. Results from many clinical and animal studies demonstrate that dietary intake of flavonoids might prove helpful in preventing T2D. In this review, we discuss the currently available rodent animal models of T2D and analyze the advantages, the limitations of each T2D model, and highlight the potential anti-diabetic effects of flavonoids as well as the mechanisms of their actions.
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