We can expect to see more seasonable temperatures by next weekend, says a meteorologist from Environment Canada.

They're not necessarily treating sick patients in hospitals, but a number of Manitoba-based scientists are working long hours and facing incredible pressure to battle the novel coronavirus from their labs and research facilities.

Acclaimed jigger Ryan Richard, from Sandy Bay First Nation, is calling all dancers to showcase their skills in an online jigging competition.

Mathias Colomb Cree Nation is wondering why the federal government ignored their community's proposal for an emergency COVID-19 response space in favour of a Calgary company's. 

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister says big public events, including professional sports, will be on the back burner when the province announces plans to reopen sectors of its economy that were shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Royal Canadian Mint's newest offering features Manitoba's most famous UFO encounter, which happened in 1967 when Stefan Michalak went looking for precious metals near Falcon Lake.

A 2001 survey of pediatric residency training directors indicated that few programs prepared residents to intervene on tobacco. A decade later, it is not known whether programs are doing more to prepare residents to intervene effectively with patients and parents.

Despite the need for pediatricians to play a leadership role in tobacco prevention and control, most pediatric residency training programs focus more on health effects of tobacco use and smoke exposure than on how to intervene with patients and parents. (Read the full article)

Youth exposure to retail tobacco advertisements and displays is associated with smoking initiation. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 gives states and local governments legal authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of tobacco advertising.

This is the first experimental study using a virtual store environment to provide evidence that a policy banning tobacco product displays at the point of sale may deter youth from attempting to purchase tobacco products at retail stores. (Read the full article)

Children exposed to second-hand smoke have high rates of hospitalization for respiratory illness. These visits represent a "teachable moment" when parental smokers can be motivated to quit. However, pediatric health care practitioners receive little training in tobacco cessation.

The Web-Based Respiratory Education About Tobacco and Health online training program was effective at increasing the provision of an effective tobacco cessation intervention by pediatric hospital-based respiratory therapists, registered nurses, and nurse practitioners to adult smokers. (Read the full article)

Among youth with asthma, tobacco smoke exposure causes increased asthma morbidity. Little is known about changes over time in tobacco smoke exposure among youth with asthma in a national sample.

Our analysis reveals a decrease in environmental tobacco smoke exposure among children and adolescents with current asthma in the United States from 1988–1994 to 2005–2010, but a majority of youth with asthma remain exposed to environmental tobacco smoke. (Read the full article)

Active smoking and secondhand smoke are associated with chronic kidney disease in adults. No data are available for children.

Secondhand smoke and active smoking were associated with decreased estimated glomerular filtration rate in US adolescents. These findings support that tobacco smoke effects on kidney function begin in childhood. (Read the full article)

Young adult smokers frequently encounter the health care system as parents coming in for their child’s medical visit. Child health care clinicians, however, do not typically provide smoking cessation assistance to parents.

This national cluster-randomized trial demonstrates that a tobacco dependence intervention for parents can be effectively implemented in routine pediatric outpatient practice. (Read the full article)

Despite declines in cigarette smoking, smokeless tobacco use among youth has remained unchanged in the United States. Modified or novel smokeless tobacco products are being increasingly promoted to youth in the United States as an alternative to smoking.

Among US students in grades 6 through 12, 5.0% used snuff or chewing or dipping tobacco, whereas 2.2% used snus or dissolvable tobacco products. Approximately two-thirds of smokeless tobacco users concurrently smoked combustible tobacco; risk perception of all tobacco products was protective of smokeless tobacco use. (Read the full article)

Prosmoking messages, delivered through marketing and the media, can reach very young children and influence attitudes and behaviors around smoking.

Marketing of tobacco and cigarette brands has successfully reached young children in low- and middle-income countries. More effective measures are needed to restrict the reach of tobacco marketing. (Read the full article)

Youth are frequent consumers of movies that contain high levels of violence, and violent content in films, especially those rated PG-13, has been increasing over time.

Content analyses seldom examine how violence is portrayed with other health risk behaviors, such smoking, drinking, and sex. This study presents an innovative way to characterize on-screen violent content and demonstrates the extent to which risk behaviors co-occur within films. (Read the full article)

Diarrhea still remains as a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Intervention to reduce this risk are needed. Evidence on the effect of Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938 to prevent diarrhea in children is scarce.

In healthy children attending day care centers, daily administration of L reuteri DSM 17938 had a significant effect in reducing episodes and duration of diarrhea and respiratory tract infections, with consequent cost saving for the community. (Read the full article)

The widely disseminated National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism screening tool for adolescent alcohol use was developed based on epidemiologic data. It has not been validated in a clinical sample and does not screen for tobacco or drug use.

This study found that a measure that expanded the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism adolescent alcohol use tool to include tobacco and drugs was sensitive and specific for identifying substance use disorders in a pediatric clinic patient population. (Read the full article)

Cotinine assays for dried blood spots have been developed but not deployed in a large sample of newborn specimens.

Cotinine levels consistent with active maternal smoking were detectable in 12% of newborn blood spots, although 41% of the mothers reportedly did not smoke. Data confirm that reported smoking during pregnancy is an imperfect measure of prenatal tobacco smoke exposure. (Read the full article)

Cigarette smoking during adolescence causes significant health problems. Health care providers play an important role in promoting tobacco use abstinence among adolescents, but recent data on the prevalence of provider screening and advice to adolescents are lacking.

This study uses nationally representative surveillance data to provide current estimates of self-reported receipt of health professional screening and advice about tobacco use among US adolescents. Cessation behaviors and correlates of past-year quit attempts among smokers were also explored. (Read the full article)

Parental smoking cessation helps eliminate children’s exposure to tobacco smoke. A child’s visit to the doctor provides a teachable moment for parental smoking cessation. Effective strategies to help parents quit smoking are available for implementation.

Evidence-based outpatient intervention for parents who smoke can be delivered successfully after the initial implementation. Maximizing parental quit rates in the pediatric context will require more complete and sustained systems-level integration. (Read the full article)

There is a debate about whether e-cigarettes will benefit public health. However, there is little knowledge about how e-cigarette users and dual users (those using both e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes) differ from other adolescents on a range of variables.

Teenagers who only used e-cigarettes were intermediate in levels of risk and protective factors between nonusers and those who used both cigarettes and e-cigarettes. This raises a question about whether e-cigarettes recruit low-risk youth to tobacco product use. (Read the full article)

Noncigarette tobacco products are increasingly popular among youth, especially youth who smoke cigarettes. Although youth use of conventional cigarettes is on the decline, use of other tobacco products is rising and multiple product use may be an escalating trend.

More than twice as many youth in the United States currently use 2 or more tobacco products than cigarettes alone. Youth multiple product use is associated with increased nicotine dependence, raising concerns about the additive harms of noncigarette tobacco products. (Read the full article)

Carbapenems are currently the preferred agents for the treatment of serious Acinetobacter infections. However, whether cefepime/cefpirome can be used to treat Acinetobacter bloodstream infection (BSI) if it is active against the causative pathogens is not clear. This study aimed to compare the efficacy of cefepime/cefpirome and carbapenem monotherapy in patients with Acinetobacter BSI. The population included 360 patients with monomicrobial Acinetobacter BSI receiving appropriate antimicrobial therapy admitted to four medical centres in Taiwan in 2012–2017. The predictors of 30-day mortality were determined by Cox regression analysis. The overall 30-day mortality rate in the appropriate antibiotic treatment group was 25.0% (90/360 patients), respectively. The crude 30-day mortality rates for cefepime/cefpirome and carbapenem therapy were 11.5% (7/61 patients) and 26.3% (21/80 patients), respectively. The patients receiving cefepime/cefpirome/carbapenem therapy were infected by Acinetobacter nosocomialis (51.8%), A. baumannii (18.4%) and A. pittii (12.1%). After adjusting for age, Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score, invasive procedures, and underlying diseases, cefepime/cefpirome therapy was not independently associated with a higher or lower 30-day mortality compared to the carbapenem therapy. SOFA score (hazard ratio [HR], 1.324; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.137–1.543; P < 0.001) and neutropenia (HR, 7.060; 95% CI, 1.607–31.019; P = 0.010) were independent risk factors for 30-day mortality of patients receiving cefepime/cefpirome or carbapenem monotherapy. The incidence density of 30-day mortality for cefepime/cefpirome versus carbapenem therapy was 0.40% versus 1.04%. The therapeutic response of cefepime/cefpirome therapy was comparable to that of carbapenems among patients with Acinetobacter BSI receiving appropriate antimicrobial therapy.

QPX7728 is an ultra-broad-spectrum boronic acid beta-lactamase inhibitor that demonstrates inhibition of key serine and metallo beta-lactamases at a nano molar range in biochemical assays with purified enzymes. The broad-spectrum inhibitory activity of QPX7728 observed in biochemical experiments translates into enhancement of the potency of many beta-lactams against strains of target pathogens producing beta-lactamases. The impact of bacterial efflux and permeability on inhibitory potency were determined using isogenic panels of KPC-3 producing isogenic strains of K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa and OXA-23-producing strains of A. baumannii with various combinations of efflux and porin mutations. QPX7728 was minimally affected by multi-drug resistance efflux pumps in either Enterobacteriaceae, or in non-fermenters such as P. aeruginosa or A. baumannii. In P. aeruginosa, the potency of QPX7728 was further enhanced when the outer membrane is permeabilized. The potency of QPX7728 in P. aeruginosa is not affected by inactivation of the carbapenem porin OprD. While changes in OmpK36 (but not OmpK35) reduced the potency of QPX7728 (8-16-fold), QPX7728 (4 μg/ml) nevertheless completely reversed KPC-mediated meropenem resistance in strains with porin mutations, consistent with a lesser effect of these mutations on the potency of QPX7728 compared to other agents. The ultra-broad-spectrum beta-lactamase inhibition profile combined with enhancement of the activity of multiple beta-lactam antibiotics with varying sensitivity to the intrinsic resistance mechanisms of efflux and permeability indicate QPX7728 is a useful inhibitor for use with multiple beta-lactam antibiotics.

Probiotics might provide an alternative approach for the control of oral candidiasis. However, studies on the antifungal activity of probiotics in the oral cavity are based on the consumption of yogurt or other dietary products, and there is a necessary to use appropriate biomaterials and specific strains to obtain probiotic formulations targeting local oral administration. In this study, we impregnated gellan gum, a natural biopolymer used as a food-additive, with a probiotic and investigated its antifungal activity against Candida albicans. Lactobacillus paracasei 28.4, a strain recently isolated from the oral cavity of a caries-free individual, was incorporated in several concentrations of gellan gum (0.6% to 1%). All tested concentrations could incorporate L. paracasei cells while maintaining bacterial viability. Probiotic/gellan formulations were stable for 7 days when stored at room temperature or 4°C. Long-term storage of bacteria-impregnated gellan gum was achieved when L. paracasei 28.4 was lyophilized. The probiotic/gellan formulations provided a release of L. paracasei cells over 24 hours that was sufficient to inhibit the growth of C. albicans with effects dependent on the cell concentrations incorporated into gellan gum. The probiotic/gellan formulations also had inhibitory activity against Candida spp. biofilms by reducing the number of Candida spp. cells (p < 0.0001), decreasing the total biomass (p = 0.0003), and impairing hyphae formation (p = 0.0002), compared to the control group which received no treatment. Interestingly, probiotic formulation of 1% w/v gellan gum provided an oral colonization of L. paracasei in mice with approximately 6 log of CFU/mL after 10 days. This formulation inhibited the C. albicans growth (p < 0.0001), prevented the development of candidiasis lesions (p = 0.0013), and suppressed inflammation (p = 0.0006) when compared to the mice not treated in the microscopic analysis of the tongue dorsum. These results indicate that gellan gum is a promising biomaterial and can be used as a carrier system to promote oral colonization for probiotics that prevent oral candidiasis.

Senate Bill 25 would raise the legal age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21 DOVER, Del. – Surrounded by members of the General Assembly, advocates, students, and health care professionals, Governor John Carney on Tuesday announced his support for Senate Bill 25 – legislation that would raise the legal age for sales of […]

Protecting the Health of our Young People, and our State’s Future, by Raising the Minimum Sales Age of Tobacco Products from 18 to 21 Op-ed by Karyl T. Rattay, MD, MS, Director, Division of Public Health, Delaware Department of Health and Social Services It’s a fact that most smokers start using tobacco as youth: Eighty-nine […]

Some schools of thought suggest that the eruption pushed Earth into volcanic winter that lasted as long as six years and the planet Earth had to endure a longish cooling period of a thousand years.

Manitoba PNP held a draw on December 6th and invited 221 candidates to apply for immigration on the provincial nomination leading to permanent residence in the country. These candidates were in• Skilled Worker Overseas• Skilled Worker in Canada,•…

1 Seychellois Rupee = 0.3936 Trinidad and Tobago Dollar

1 Trinidad and Tobago Dollar = 176.0988 Iraqi Dinar

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