Search Results (23)

Hemotrophic mycoplasmas (HMs) are cell wall-less, small and uncultivable pathogens, which can cause infections in pigs with no to severe clinical signs and can contribute to significant economic losses in the pig industry. In addition to the known mechanical transmission routes of HMs (e.g., via blood-contaminated instruments or lesions from ranking fights), transmission to pigs by arthropod vectors such as Stomoxys calcitrans is being discussed. To date, there is scant available data concerning the transmission of HMs by stable flies. The objective of this study is to gain more data concerning the occurrence of HMs in Stomoxys calcitrans. Therefore, quantitative real-time PCR was conducted on different stable fly samples (surface washings and whole flies). We found Mycoplasma (M.) suis in 5.2% of crushed flies and 4.2% of fly wash solutions, and M. parvum was detected in 5.2% of flies and 9.4% of fly wash solutions. ‘Candidatus (Ca.) M. haemosuis’ was not detected in any sample. The mean bacterial loads were 2.0 × 10² M. suis/fly, 9.3 × 10² M. suis/fly wash solution and, for M. parvum, 2.4 × 10³ M. parvum/fly and 2.1 × 10³ M. parvum/fly wash solution. This molecular occurrence of porcine HMs in blood-sucking flies and reasonable bacterial loads in the two- to three-digit range demonstrate that these flies serve as mechanical vectors in stables and are, therefore, of epidemiological importance. Full article

Background/Objectives: Feeding difficulties in late preterm infants are a major factor contributing to prolonged hospitalization and re-admission. Early support for the sucking and swallowing muscles may accelerate their maturation, facilitating safe and early discharge. This study aims to evaluate the effects of the Kinesio-taping technique on feeding muscles and assess feeding and swallowing function in late preterm infants through the acoustic analysis of swallowing sounds. Methods: Seventy-four late preterm infants (mean gestational age 35.30 ± 0.81 weeks) were randomly assigned to either a Kinesio-taping group or a control group. A single physiotherapist applied Kinesio taping to support the masseter and hyoid muscles, using a facilitatory technique to enhance muscle function. The Kinesio taping was removed two days after its application. The amount of milk intake, the time for milk intake, oxygen saturation during milk intake, the number of days required for transition to full oral feeding, the length of hospital stay, the duration of oxygen requirement, the maximum number of rhythmic swallows, and the heart rate during milk intake were recorded using a digital stethoscope before and two days after Kinesio-taping application. The collected data were assessed through acoustic analysis. Results: No statistically significant differences were observed between the Kinesio-taping and control groups regarding milk intake amount, feeding duration, oxygen saturation during feeding, the transition time to full oral feeding, the length of hospital stay, or the duration of oxygen support (p > 0.05). However, a significant difference was found between the groups in the maximum number of rhythmic swallows during feeding and the heart rate during milk intake (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The application of the Kinesio-taping technique showed no adverse effects on preterm infants in the NICU during the feeding skills intervention. The assessment of acoustic analysis revealed a significant difference in the maximum number of rhythmic swallows and heart stabilization during feeding in the Kinesio-taping group. Further studies are warranted, incorporating different application types and techniques with larger sample sizes, especially among preterm infants with an early gestational age in the NICU, to stabilize the suck and swallow muscles. Full article

This study aims to describe the prevalence of malocclusion and identify associated factors in preschool children. Completed in 2022–2023, this cross-sectional study included 523 children aged 26 to 80 months in municipal schools in Salvador. An oral examination was carried out on the children, and a questionnaire was self-administered by the parents. Descriptive analyses and multivariate logistic regression (the backward method, p-value ≤ 0.05, 95% CI) were conducted. The majority of children were female (51.82%), over 54 months old (52.2%), Black or mixed race (90.63%), and not affected by COVID-19 (92.35%). The prevalence of malocclusion was 43.21%, with open bite as the most common condition. There was a significant association between malocclusion and screen time (OR: 1.34; p: 0.116; CI: 1.0–1.94), physical/psychological aggression (OR: 2.55; p: 0.031; CI: 1.0–5.98), consumption of ultra-processed foods (OR: 1.77; p: 0.003; CI: 1.22–2.57), digital suction (OR: 3.1; p: 0.001; CI: 1.56–6.16), and the habit of biting objects (OR: 1.56; p: 0.121; CI: 1.0–2.73). The promotion of comprehensive health in early childhood and psychosocial interventions are recommended, aiming to reduce screen time, aggression, consumption of ultra-processed foods, thumb sucking, and the habit of biting objects to prevent malocclusion. Full article

Purpose: To analyse the relationship between the different habits that occur in childhood and the different malocclusions in the three planes of space. Material and methods: A clinical examination of 106 children between 5 and 12 years of age was carried out and a survey validated by professors of the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Seville was made for the parents in order to identify the habits and relate them to the possible malocclusions detected in the child’s mouth. Results: 72.64% of the sample presented a malocclusion in at least one of the three planes of space, with a similar distribution. When correlating the variables, statistically significant relationships were observed in the vertical plane with atypical swallowing (p = 0 < 0.05; V > 0.3) and lip sucking (p = 0 < 0.05; V > 0.3) and in the horizontal plane with oral breathing (p = 0 < 0.05; V > 0.3), atypical swallowing (p = 0 < 0.05; V < 0.3) and digital sucking (p = 0 < 0.05; V < 0.3). Conclusions: It has been observed that the prevalence and prolongation of habits in childhood is increasing, so it is essential to detect pernicious habits at an early age to prevent the establishment of malocclusions and to favour the correct craniofacial growth of the child. Full article

The brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) (BPH) is a typical monophagous sucking rice pest. Over the course of their evolution, BPH and its symbionts have established an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship, with the symbionts being important to the growth, development, reproduction, and variation in virulence of BPH. Yeast-like symbionts (YLS), harbored in the abdomen fat body cells of BPH, are vital to the growth and reproduction of the host. In recent research, the symbionts in BPH have mainly been detected using blood cell counting, PCR, real-time quantitative PCR, and other methods. These methods are vulnerable to external interference, cumbersome, time consuming and laborious. Droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) does not need a standard curve, can achieve absolute quantification, does not rely on Cq values, and is more useful for analyzing copy number variation, gene mutations, and relative gene expression. A rapid detection method for the YLS of BPH based on ddPCR was established and optimized in this study. The results showed that the method’s limits of detection for the two species of YLS (Ascomycetes symbionts and Pichia guilliermondii) were 1.3 copies/μL and 1.2 copies/μL, respectively. The coefficient of variation of the sample repetition was less than 5%; therefore, the ddPCR method established in this study had good sensitivity, specificity, and repeatability. It can be used to detect the YLS of BPH rapidly and accurately. Full article

This survey examined the prevalence of malocclusion and its associated factors in 3- to 5-year-old children in Huizhou, China. Children were recruited from 21 kindergartens using a multistage sampling method. Two examiners performed oral examinations on the children, assessing occlusal traits, including primary molar and canine relationship, overjet, crossbite, overbite, anterior open bite, scissor bite, midline deviation, crowding, and spacing. Caries experience was recorded. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to collect background information and oral health-related habits. Chi-square test, Mann–Whitney U test, and binary logistic regression were conducted. The study invited 1485 children and eventually recruited 1454 (52.9% boys; response rate: 97.9%). The prevalence of malocclusion was 68.3%, and deep overbite was found in 48.6% of the children. Children who had lip-biting habits had a higher prevalence of deep overbite than those who did not (OR = 2.36, p < 0.05). Children who had digit-sucking habits and dental caries in anterior maxillary teeth had a lower prevalence of deep overbite than those who did not (OR = 0.73 and 0.70, respectively, p < 0.05). In conclusion, over half of the children in Huizhou who participated in the study had malocclusion. Dental caries in anterior maxillary teeth, digit-sucking, and lip-biting were the associated factors of deep overbite. Full article

Insect pests are a major element influencing agricultural production. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 20–40% of pest damage occurs each year, which reduces global production and becomes a major challenge to crop production. These insect pests cause sooty mold disease by sucking the sap from the crop’s organs, especially leaves, fruits, stems, and roots. To control these pests, pesticides are frequently used because they are fast-acting and scalable. Due to environmental pollution and health awareness, less use of pesticides is recommended. One of the salient approaches could be to reduce the wide use of pesticides by spraying on demand. To perform spot spraying, the location of the pest must first be determined. Therefore, the growing population and increasing food demand emphasize the development of novel methods and systems for agricultural production to address environmental concerns and ensure efficiency and sustainability. To accurately identify these insect pests at an early stage, insect pest detection and classification have recently become in high demand. Thus, this study aims to develop an object recognition system for the detection of crops damaging insect pests and their classification. The current work proposes an automatic system in the form of a smartphone IP- camera to detect insect pests from digital images/videos to reduce farmers’ reliance on pesticides. The proposed approach is based on YOLO object detection architectures including YOLOv5 (n, s, m, l, and x), YOLOv3, YOLO-Lite, and YOLOR. For this purpose, we collected 7046 images in the wild under different illumination and background conditions to train the underlying object detection approaches. We trained and test the object recognition system with different parameters from scratch. The eight models are compared and analyzed. The experimental results show that the average precision (AP@0.5) of the eight models including YOLO-Lite, YOLOv3, YOLOR, and YOLOv5 with five different scales (n, s, m, l, and x) reach 51.7%, 97.6%, 96.80%, 83.85%, 94.61%, 97.18%, 97.04%, and 98.3% respectively. The larger the model, the higher the average accuracy of the detection validation results. We observed that the YOLOv5x model is fully functional and can correctly identify the twenty-three species of insect pests at 40.5 milliseconds (ms). The developed model YOLOv5x performs the state-of-the-art model with an average precision value of (mAP@0.5) 98.3%, (mAP@0.5:0.95) value of 79.8%, precision of 94.5% and a recall of 97.8%, and F1-score with 96% on our IP-23 dataset. The results show that the system works efficiently and was able to correctly detect and identify insect pests, which can be employed for realistic application while farming. Full article

Mothers practice co-sleeping and breastfeeding simultaneously, for convenience and to strengthen bonding. Due to the scarcity of studies analyzing the impact of co-sleeping on primary dentition, this study aimed to analyze the possible effects of co-sleeping on children’s occlusion. In this cross-sectional study, mothers of 221 children aged 2–5 years who had been breastfed for less than 6 months completed a questionnaire about non-nutritive sucking habits. The WHO (World Health Organization) and IOTN-AC indices (the Aesthetic Component of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need) were used to assess malocclusion. The type of sagittal (dental and skeletal), transverse and vertical malocclusion was recorded. The non-co-sleeping group showed significantly higher pacifier use (p < 0.05), digital sucking (p < 0.05) and atypical swallowing (p < 0.05) habits. The non-co-sleeping group showed significantly higher mean scores on the IOTN-AC (p < 0.05) and WHO (p < 0.01), a significantly higher presence of canine class II (p < 0.05), anterior open bite (p < 0.05), posterior crossbite (p < 0.05), overbite (p < 0.05), skeletal class II (p < 0.01) and protrusion (p < 0.05). In conclusion, children who practice co-sleeping appear to have a lower frequency and duration of non-nutritive sucking habits. Co-sleeping may contribute to a lower development of malocclusions in children who are weaned early (before six months of age). Full article

Plant-mediated RNA interference (RNAi) holds great promise for insect pest control, as plants can be transformed to produce double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to selectively down-regulate insect genes essential for survival. For optimum potency, dsRNA can be produced in plant plastids, enabling the accumulation of unprocessed dsRNAs. However, the relative effectiveness of this strategy in inducing an RNAi response in insects using different feeding mechanisms is understudied. To investigate this, we first tested an in vitro-synthesized 189 bp dsRNA matching a highly conserved region of the v-ATPaseA gene from cotton mealybug (Phenacoccus solenopsis) on three insect species from two different orders that use leaf-chewing, lacerate-and-flush, or sap-sucking mechanisms to feed, and showed that the dsRNA significantly down-regulated the target gene. We then developed transplastomic Micro-tom tomato plants to produce the dsRNA in plant plastids and showed that the dsRNA is produced in leaf, flower, green fruit, red fruit, and roots, with the highest dsRNA levels found in the leaf. The plastid-produced dsRNA induced a significant gene down-regulation in insects using leaf-chewing and lacerate-and-flush feeding mechanisms, while sap-sucking insects were unaffected. Our results suggest that plastid-produced dsRNA can be used to control leaf-chewing and lacerate-and-flush feeding insects, but may not be useful for sap-sucking insects. Full article

This study aims to investigate the content and usefulness of YouTube videos on** thumb-sucking habits. Methods: YouTube was systematically searched for all relevant videos on thumb sucking using primary keywords, such as thumb, finger, and digit sucking. Video information was assessed, such as the type of video, number of likes or dislikes, number of views, and duration of upload. The usefulness of videos was analyzed, and information about treatment modalities was evaluated. Results: A total of 331 YouTube videos (314 educational offerings and 17 testimonials) were included in the analysis. Individual users uploaded (36.6%), followed by healthcare professionals (30.5%). Only 4.83% of the videos were classified as having “very useful” general information content, whereas 51.1% were rated as “slightly useful.” There was no significant correlation between the usefulness score and the interaction rate, video length, or viewing rate. The videos advised a psychosocial approach and mechanical or reminder therapy in 32.33% and 25.07% of videos, respectively. Preventive methods accounted for 7.26%, and chemical treatments were discussed in 5.44% of the videos. Conclusion: Information on YouTube about thumb-sucking habits was unsatisfactory and should be improved by oral healthcare professionals and organizations. Full article

Rett Syndrome is an x linked developmental disorder which becomes apparent in females after 6 to 18 months of age. It leads to severe impairments including loss of speech, loss of hand movements/manual dexterity, characteristic hand movements such as hang wringing and intellectual disability/learning problems. This systematic review was carried out to identify the dental manifestation of Rett syndrome and to shed light on treatment options available for oral health problems associated with Rett syndrome. A systematic literature search was conducted on the PubMed, Scopus, Biomed, Web of Science, Embase, Google Scholars, Cochrane and CINAHL using the following entries: Rett syndrome (n = 3790), Oral health and Rett syndrome (n = 17), dental health of Rett syndrome patients (n = 13), and the MeSH terms listed below: Rett syndrome and Oral Health (n = 17), Rett syndrome and dentistry (n = 29). The final review included 22 search articles. The most common oral findings was bruxism. Masseteric hypertrophy was also reported. Anterior open bite and non-physiological tooth wear was observed. Other oral manifestations of Rett syndrome included mouth breathing, tongue thrusting, digit/thumb sucking, high arch palate. Increased awareness and dental education amongst dentists and assistants regarding the dental manifestations of Rett syndrome and similar neurodevelopmental disorders is required to improve the level of care and empathy they can provide to these differently able patients. Research on dental aspects of Rett is scarce and this remains a neglected topic. Full article

Orofacial myologists are frequently called upon to address retained oral habit concerns. During this process, current I.A.O.M. recommended treatment includes addressing tongue, lip, and jaw rest posture concerns. Following digit sucking remediation, we may also be called upon to address these rest posture issues, and tongue thrust more aggressively together. In this process, facial growth and development and jaw structure may coincidentally improve as a result of ‘nature taking its course’ by addressing both swallow AND rest posture. In a select subset of clients, dramatic improvements may occur if the timing is right. This article discusses one such case that appears to have yielded a significant improvement in oral postures influencing improved facial and oral growth and development. Full article

This article emphasizes the critical need for information specifically regarding the topic of retained sucking behaviors. The study aimed to confirm results provided by Van Norman of 723 subjects in 1997. Parent surveys were collected on 441 subjects who received an orofacial myofunctional treatment program provided by one certified orofacial myologist. Results of this study do confirm that retained digit sucking behavior may be addressed successfully and expediently by a program based on positive behavior modification techniques. Full article

The purposes of this study were to evaluate maternal attitudes and knowledge towards digit sucking habits and to investigate the association between various factors and the presence of these habits. A cross-sectional sample of 150 mothers of children currently engaged in digit sucking habits were interviewed. The information collected was from a questionnaire completed by the mothers. The analyzed data regarding the mothers revealed that younger mothers represented 54% of the sample, 47.3% were well-educated and 70.0% were unemployed. Regarding the children, female children (65.3%) practiced digit habits more than males, and 45.3% of the children were younger than 3 years of age. Significant factors associated with maternal attitudes towards digit sucking habit included: 88.6% of mothers never tolerated this habit, 75.0% of the mothers were unemployed and provided instruction to cease the habit, and 89.9% of the mothers never sought advice from a dentist. Overall, mothers did not view digit sucking habits to be an acceptable behavior regardless of their nationality. Mothers indicated that they tried to stop the habit with a variety of techniques but without any professional advice. The study concludes that mothers would benefit from receiving information about a motivational program, professional advice, and suggestions to discourage this habit. Full article

The purpose of this study was to establish a quantitative method to classify lingual frenulum as normal and altered. Methods: 98 people were included in this study. All measurements were made with maxium opening of the mouth. A digital caliper was used to measure the length of the frenulum under three conditions: (a) with the tongue tip on the incisal papilla; (b) with the tongue sucked up and maintained against the hard palate; and (c) with tongue stretching over a spatula. Results: observations indicated that the most useful and statistically significant way of measuring frenulum length was achieved with maximum mouth opening and the tongue tip on the incisal papilla. Conclusion: this quantitative method was demonstrated to be effective for identifying and distinguishing normal and altered frenular length. Full article