METHODS: Saliva-coated glass beads (sGB) were used as substratum for the adhesion of a mixed-bacterial suspension of Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus sanguinis and Streptococcus mitis. Biofilms formed on sGB at 3h and 24h represented the early and established-plaque models. The biofilms were exposed to three doses of the sweeteners (10%), introduced at three intervals to simulate the exposure of dental plaque to sugar during three consecutive food intakes. The treated sGB were (i) examined under the SEM and (ii) collected for turbidity reading. The absorbance indicated the amount of plaque mass produced. Analysis was performed comparative to sucrose as control.
RESULTS: Higher rate of bacterial adherence was determined during the early compared to established phases of formation. Comparative to the sweeteners, sucrose showed a 40% increase in bacterial adherence and produced 70% more plaque-mass. Bacterial counts and SEM micrographs exhibited absence of matrix in all the sweetener-treated biofilms at the early phase of formation. At the established phase, presence of matrix was detected but at significantly lower degree compared to sucrose (p<0.05).
CONCLUSION: Alternatives sweeteners promoted the formation of oral biofilm with lighter mass and lower bacterial adherence. Hence, suggesting alternative sweeteners as potential antiplaque agents.
Patients and methods: This was a prospective study conducted in Hospital Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, between March 2015 and June 2015. Educational intervention was provided to 96 patients (11 males, 85 females; mean age 52.4±12.9 years; range, 20 to 83 years) who fulfilled the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Questionnaires to assess knowledge of CVD risk were given to patients to be answered before reading the informative leaflet, after one hour of intervention, and during their next follow-up three months from the intervention. Both the informative leaflet and questionnaires were prepared in English and then translated into Malay and Chinese languages to suit the need of local patients.
Results: Our results showed that RA patients had good knowledge at baseline regarding risk of smoking, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia on increasing CVD risk and that exercise would not damage their joints. However, they had low knowledge at baseline regarding the amount of exercise needed for lower CVD risks and risk of CVD with use of anti-inflammatory drugs in RA. Total knowledge score increased significantly from baseline immediately after educational intervention. However, total knowledge score decreased after three months compared to immediate post- intervention phase while it was still significantly higher compared to baseline. The improvement was most obvious for knowledge regarding anti- inflammatory drugs and CVD risk and knowledge regarding the number of flares and CVD risk. Our study did not find any significant association between demographic characteristics and traditional cardiovascular risk factors with knowledge of CVD risk.
Conclusion: Rheumatoid arthritis patients have low knowledge regarding their CVD risk related to their disease. The intervention of providing an informative leaflet effectively improved the knowledge of this group of patients on CVD risk particularly in the field related to RA-specific risk.
Methods: Combination of throat and nasal swab specimens was subjected to viral RNA extraction. For screening, the extracted RNA was subjected to real-time RT-PCR targeting upstream of E gene, open reading frame 1b and open reading frame 1a. For confirmation, the RNA was subjected to RT-PCR targeting partial part of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and nucleocapsid, followed by amplification of complete N gene region. Nucleotide sequencing of the first Malaysian case of MERS-CoV was performed following the confirmation with real-time RT-PCR detection.
Results: Initial analysis of partial RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and N gene revealed that the nucleotides had high similarity to Jeddah_1_2013 strain. Analysis of complete N gene region (1 242 nucleotides) from the case showed high similarity and yet distinct to the nucleotide sequences of camel-derived MERS-CoV.
Conclusions: From the finding, there are possibilities that the patient acquired the infection from zoonotic transmission from dromedary camels.
METHODS: All 132 EDs were requested for a copy of written discharge instruction given to the patients. The mTBI discharge instructions were evaluated using the Patient Education Materials Assessment-Printable Tool (PEMAT-P) for understandability and actionability. Readability was measured using an online readability tool of Malay text. The content was compared against the discharge instructions recommended by established guidelines.
RESULTS: 49 articles were eligible for the study. 26 of the articles met the criteria of understandability, and 3 met the criteria for actionability. The average readability level met the ability of average adult. Most of the discharge instructions focused on emergency symptoms, and none contained post-concussion features.
CONCLUSION: Majority of the discharge instructions provided were appropriate for average people to read but difficult to understand and act upon. Important information was neglected in most discharge instructions. Thus, revision and future development of mTBI discharge instruction should consider health literacy demand and cognitive ability to process such information.
RESULTS: A first set of sORFs was identified from existing annotations that fitted the maximum of 80 residues criterion. A second set was predicted using parameters that specifically searched for ORF candidates of 80 codons or less in the exonic, intronic and intergenic sequences of the subject genomes. A total of 1986 conserved sORFs were predicted and characterized.
CONCLUSIONS: It is evident that numerous open reading frames that could potentially encode for polypeptides consisting of 80 amino acid residues or less are overlooked during standard gene prediction and annotation. From our results, additional targeted reannotation of genomes is clearly able to complement standard genome annotation to identify sORFs. Due to the lack of, and limitations with experimental validation, we propose that a simple conservation analysis can provide an acceptable means of ensuring that the predicted sORFs are sufficiently clear of gene prediction artefacts.
RESULTS: A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial ORF and putative control region concurs with a haploweb analysis of nuclear ITS2 sequences in delimiting three species among our dataset: species A and B are found in Madagascar whereas species C occurs in Okinawa, the Philippines and New Caledonia. Comparison of ITS1 sequences from these three species with data available online suggests that species C is also found on the Great Barrier Reef, in Malaysia, in the South China Sea and in Taiwan, and that a distinct species D occurs in the Red Sea. Shallow-water morphs of species A correspond to the morphological description of Stylophora madagascarensis, species B presents the morphology of Stylophora mordax, whereas species C comprises various morphotypes including Stylophora pistillata and Stylophora mordax.
CONCLUSIONS: Genetic analysis of the coral genus Stylophora reveals species boundaries that are not congruent with morphological traits. Of the four hypotheses that may explain such discrepancy (phenotypic plasticity, morphological stasis, morphological convergence, and interspecific hybridization), the first two appear likely to play a role but the fourth one is rejected since mitochondrial and nuclear markers yield congruent species delimitations. The position of the root in our molecular phylogenies suggests that the center of origin of Stylophora is located in the western Indian Ocean, which probably explains why this genus presents a higher biodiversity in the westernmost part of its area of distribution than in the "Coral Triangle".
RESULTS: Phylogenetic analysis revealed at least four distinct DENV3/III lineages. Two of the lineages (DENV3/III-B and DENV3/III-C) are current actively circulating whereas the DENV3/III-A and DENV3/III-D were no longer recovered since the 1980s. Selection pressure analysis revealed strong evidence of positive selection on a number of amino acid sites in PrM, E, NS1, NS2a, NS2b, NS3, NS4a, and NS5. The Malaysian DENV3/III isolates recovered in the 1980s (MY.59538/1987) clustered into DENV3/III-B, which was the lineage with cosmopolitan distribution consisting of strains actively circulating in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The Malaysian isolates recovered after the 2000s clustered within DENV3/III-C. This DENV3/III-C lineage displayed a more restricted geographical distribution and consisted of isolates recovered from Asia, denoted as the Asian lineage. Amino acid variation sites in NS5 (NS5-553I/M, NS5-629 T, and NS5-820E) differentiated the DENV3/III-C from other DENV3 viruses. The codon 629 of NS5 was identified as a positively selected site. While the NS5-698R was identified as unique to the genome of DENV3/III-C3. Phylogeographic results suggested that the recent Malaysian DENV3/III-C was likely to have been introduced from Singapore in 2008 and became endemic. From Malaysia, the virus subsequently spread into Taiwan and Thailand in the early part of the 2010s and later reintroduced into Singapore in 2013.
CONCLUSIONS: Distinct clustering of the Malaysian old and new DENV3/III isolates suggests that the currently circulating DENV3/III in Malaysia did not descend directly from the strains recovered during the 1980s. Phylogenetic analyses and common genetic traits in the genome of the strains and those from the neighboring countries suggest that the Malaysian DENV3/III is likely to have been introduced from the neighboring regions. Malaysia, however, serves as one of the sources of the recent regional spread of DENV3/III-C3 within the Asia region.
RESULTS: More than 15,000 partial sequences were generated from the 5' and 3' ends of clones randomly selected from an E. tenella second generation merozoite full-length cDNA library. Clustering of these sequences produced 1,529 unique transcripts (UTs). Based on the transcript assembly and subsequently primer walking, 433 full-length cDNA sequences were successfully generated. These sequences varied in length, ranging from 441 bp to 3,083 bp, with an average size of 1,647 bp. Simple sequence repeat (SSR) analysis identified CAG as the most abundant trinucleotide motif, while codon usage analysis revealed that the ten most infrequently used codons in E. tenella are UAU, UGU, GUA, CAU, AUA, CGA, UUA, CUA, CGU and AGU. Subsequent analysis of the E. tenella complete coding sequences identified 25 putative secretory and 60 putative surface proteins, all of which are now rational candidates for development as recombinant vaccines or drug targets in the effort to control avian coccidiosis.
CONCLUSIONS: This paper describes the generation and characterisation of full-length cDNA sequences from E. tenella second generation merozoites and provides new insights into the E. tenella transcriptome. The data generated will be useful for the development and validation of diagnostic and control strategies for coccidiosis and will be of value in annotation of the E. tenella genome sequence.
RESULTS: Twenty-five MRSA biofilm producers were used as substrates to isolate MRSA-specific phages. Despite the difficulties in obtaining an isolate of this phage, two phages (UPMK_1 and UPMK_2) were isolated. Both phages varied in their ability to produce halos around their plaques, host infectivity, one-step growth curves, and electron microscopy features. Furthermore, both phages demonstrated antagonistic infectivity on planktonic cultures. This was validated in an in vitro static biofilm assay (in microtiter-plates), followed by the visualization of the biofilm architecture in situ via confocal laser scanning microscopy before and after phage infection, and further supported by phages genome analysis. The UPMK_1 genome comprised 152,788 bp coding for 155 putative open reading frames (ORFs), and its genome characteristics were between the Myoviridae and Siphoviridae family, though the morphological features confined it more to the Siphoviridae family. The UPMK_2 has 40,955 bp with 62 putative ORFs; morphologically, it presented the features of the Podoviridae though its genome did not show similarity with any of the S. aureus in the Podoviridae family. Both phages possess lytic enzymes that were associated with a high ability to degrade biofilms as shown in the microtiter plate and CLSM analyses.
CONCLUSIONS: The present work addressed the possibility of using phages as potential biocontrol agents for biofilm-producing MRSA.