Motivation technics in a cancer detection program: utilization of community resources.
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BACKGROUND: Methods to determine the microbial cause of community acquired pneumonia include detection of pneumococcal antigen and measurement of pneumococcal capsular antibody response. Their usefulness compared with conventional microbiological techniques was investigated in patients with pneumonia, some of whom had been treated with antibiotics. METHODS: Pneumococcal capsular antigen was detected by latex agglutination in sputum and the results compared prospectively with results of conventional microbiological techniques in 90 patients with community acquired pneumonia. Serum, urine, and pleural fluid samples were also tested for antigen. Serum pneumococcal capsular antibody titres were measured. RESULTS: A diagnosis was established by conventional microbiological techniques in 53 patients, 30 of whom had pneumococcal pneumonia. The sensitivity of antigen detection in first day sputum specimens (n = 18) in those with pneumococcal pneumonia was 94%; antigen was present in 23 of the 27 patients who produced representative sputum on admission and during follow up. The specificity of antigen detection in sputum in patients with non-pneumococcal pneumonia and lung infarction was 87%. Antigen was present in 12 of 25 patients with pneumonia of unknown aetiology who produced representative sputum. Antigen was rarely detected in serum and urine, but was present in pleural fluid in three of four patients with pneumococcal pneumonia and in all four patients with pneumonia of unknown aetiology. Pneumococcal antigen remained detectable in patients treated with antibiotics. Pneumococcal capsular antibody detection was as specific (85%) as antigen detection, but had a lower sensitivity (50%). CONCLUSION: Pneumococcal antigen detection in sputum or pleural fluid is of value in making a rapid diagnosis and provides an additional diagnostic result in patients with pneumococcal pneumonia, especially those receiving antibiotic treatment.
BACKGROUND: Depression is under-diagnosed and under-treated in the primary care sector. The purpose of this study was to determine the association between self-reported indications of depression by community-dwelling elderly enrollees in a managed care organization and clinical detection of depression by primary care clinicians. METHODS: This was a 2-year cohort study of elderly people (n = 3410) who responded to the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) at the midpoint of the study period. A broad measure of clinical detection was used consisting of one or more of three indicators: diagnosis of depression, visit to a mental health specialist, or antidepressant medication treatment. RESULTS: Approximately half of the community-based elderly people with self-reported indications of depression (GDS > or = 11) did not have documentation of clinical detection of depression by health providers. Physician recognition of depression tended to increase with the severity of enrollees' self-reported feelings of depression. Men 65-74 years old and those > or = 85 years old were at highest risk for under-detection of depression by primary care providers. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical detection of depression of elderly people living in the community continues to be a problem. The implications of failure to recognize the possibility of depression among elderly White men suggest a serious public health problem.
We tested whether fungal communities are impacted by nitrogen deposition or increased precipitation by PCR-amplifying partial fungal rRNA genes from 24 soil and 24 root samples from a nitrogen enrichment and irrigation experiment in a tallgrass prairie at Konza Prairie Biological Station in northeastern Kansas, U.S.A. Obtained fungal sequences represented great fungal diversity that was distributed mainly in ascomycetes and basiodiomycetes; only a few zygomycetes and glomeromycetes were detected. Conservative extrapolated estimates of the fungal species richness suggest that the true richness may be at least twice as high as observed. The effects of nitrogen enrichment or irrigation on fungal community composition, diversity or clone richness could not be unambiguously assessed because of the overwhelming diversity. However, soil communities differed from root communities in diversity, richness and composition. The compositional differences were largely attributable to an abundant, soil-inhabiting group placed as a well-supported sister group to other ascomycetes. This group likely represents a novel group of fungi. We conclude that the great fungal richness in this ecosystem precluded a reliable assessment of anthropogenic impacts on soil or rhizosphere communities using the applied sampling scheme, and that detection of novel fungi in soil may be more a rule than an exception.
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The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate an instrument to detect the various forms of clinical eating disorder that exist among young women in the community. A subsidiary aim was to test an alternative instrument based directly on the DSM-III-R criteria for eating disorders. Participants were 285 young adult women listed in the case registers of two general practices. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the new (statistically derived) instrument performed well and was better at case identification than the only other instrument currently available. In contrast, the instrument based directly on the DSM-III-R criteria performed poorly. It was not possible to assess the ability of the new instrument to detect cases of anorexia nervosa since there were no cases in the sample.
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity and the utility of the Japanese version of the WHO-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5-J) in the context of detecting suicidal ideation in elderly community residents. METHODS: A sample of 696 subjects aged 70 years or over who completed a set of questionnaires was examined. RESULTS: Cronbach's alpha was 0.87 and Loevinger's coefficient was 0.64. The total score was significantly correlated with the number of cohabitants, the number of physical illnesses, physical functioning, instrumental activities of daily living, and depressive symptoms. Subjects with suicidal ideation had significantly lower scores on the WHO-5-J. The receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that the scale significantly discriminated the subjects with suicidal ideation. When combined with the assessment of a lack of perceived social support (PSS), a standard cut-off criterion of "a total score < or = 12 or answering 0 or 1 to any of the five items" more appropriately identified elderly subjects with suicidal ideation: sensitivity = 87%, specificity = 75%, negative predictive value = 99%, and positive predictive value = 10%. CONCLUSIONS: In combination with PSS, the scale has predictive utility to detect suicidal ideation in elderly community residents.
A number of recent studies have focused on the statistical properties of networked systems such as social networks and the Worldwide Web. Researchers have concentrated particularly on a few properties that seem to be common to many networks: the small-world property, power-law degree distributions, and network transitivity. In this article, we highlight another property that is found in many networks, the property of community structure, in which network nodes are joined together in tightly knit groups, between which there are only looser connections. We propose a method for detecting such communities, built around the idea of using centrality indices to find community boundaries. We test our method on computer-generated and real-world graphs whose community structure is already known and find that the method detects this known structure with high sensitivity and reliability. We also apply the method to two networks whose community structure is not well known--a collaboration network and a food web--and find that it detects significant and informative community divisions in both cases.
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To address the link between soil microbial community composition and soil processes, we investigated the microbial communities in forest floors of two forest types that differ substantially in nitrogen availability. Cedar-hemlock (CH) and hemlock-amabilis fir (HA) forests are both common on northern Vancouver Island, B.C., occurring adjacently across the landscape. CH forest floors have low nitrogen availability and HA high nitrogen availability. Total microbial biomass was assessed using chloroform fumigation-extraction and community composition was assessed using several cultivation-independent approaches: denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of the bacterial communities, ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (RISA) of the bacterial and fungal communities, and phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) profiles of the whole microbial community. We did not detect differences in the bacterial communities of each forest type using DGGE and RISA, but differences in the fungal communities were detected using RISA. PLFA analysis detected subtle differences in overall composition of the microbial community between the forest types, as well as in particular groups of organisms. Fungal PLFAs were more abundant in the nitrogen-poor CH forests. Bacteria were proportionally more abundant in HA forests than CH in the lower humus layer, and Gram-positive bacteria were proportionally more abundant in HA forests irrespective of layer. Bacterial and fungal communities were distinct in the F, upper humus, and lower humus layers of the forest floor and total biomass decreased in deeper layers. These results indicate that there are distinct patterns in forest floor microbial community composition at the landscape scale, which may be important for understanding nutrient availability to forest vegetation.
A cultivation-independent technique for genetic profiling of PCR-amplified small-subunit rRNA genes (SSU rDNA) was chosen to characterize the diversity and succession of microbial communities during composting of an organic agricultural substrate. PCR amplifications were performed with DNA directly extracted from compost samples and with primers targeting either (i) the V4-V5 region of eubacterial 16S rRNA genes, (ii) the V3 region in the 16S rRNA genes of actinomycetes, or (iii) the V8-V9 region of fungal 18S rRNA genes. Homologous PCR products were converted to single-stranded DNA molecules by exonuclease digestion and were subsequently electrophoretically separated by their single-strand-conformation polymorphism (SSCP). Genetic profiles obtained by this technique showed a succession and increasing diversity of microbial populations with all primers. A total of 19 single products were isolated from the profiles by PCR reamplification and cloning. DNA sequencing of these molecular isolates showed similarities in the range of 92.3 to 100% to known gram-positive bacteria with a low or high G+C DNA content and to the SSU rDNA of gamma-Proteobacteria. The amplified 18S rRNA gene sequences were related to the respective gene regions of Candida krusei and Candida tropicalis. Specific molecular isolates could be attributed to different composting stages. The diversity of cultivated bacteria isolated from samples taken at the end of the composting process was low. A total of 290 isolates were related to only 6 different species. Two or three of these species were also detectable in the SSCP community profiles. Our study indicates that community SSCP profiles can be highly useful for the monitoring of bacterial diversity and community successions in a biotechnologically relevant process.
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The use of antimicrobial agents for growth promotion and therapy in the European Economic Community and the resulting public health problems are discussed. Methods for detection of residues based on microbiological criteria for acceptance are presented and evaluated.