Plastic intake by marine vertebrates has been widely reported, but information about its presence in continental waterfowl is scarce. Here we analyzed faeces of waterbirds species (European coot, Fulica atra, mallard, Anas platyrhynchos and shelduck, Tadorna tadorna) for plastic debris in five wetlands in Central Spain. We collected 89 faeces of shelduck distributed in four lakes, 43.8% of them...

Faecal bile acid excretion and intestinal transit time were studied in 18 children with inflammatory bowel disease in clinical remission and with normal stools: 16 with ulcerative colitis, two with Crohn's colitis, mean age 14 years (range 10-17 years). Five healthy children, mean age 12.4 years (range 10-17 years), were studied as control subjects. Most patients were taking sulphasalazine, but...

Regardless of diet (semi-synthetic or lab chow) or strain (AGUS or SD), germ-free rats have tryptic activity in their faeces, whereas conventional rats never do. The activity in faeces from germ-free AGUS rats was significantly higher than from SD rats.

Clinical material collected from various body sites, but excluding faeces, was cultured on either selective or non-selective media for Campylobacter spp. Campylobacter jejuni was found in only two (0.18%) of 1100 specimens; both positive specimens were urine. From these results it is suggested that C jejuni is an uncommon finding in clinical material other than faeces.

Fuel blending is a widely used approach in biomass combustion, particularly for feedstocks with low calorific value and high moisture content. In on-site sanitation technologies, fuel blending is proposed as a pre-treatment requirement to reduce moisture levels and improve the physiochemical properties of raw faeces prior to drying. This study investigates the co-combustion performance of wood ...

1. A 25% faecal suspension in sodium chloride solution, incubated anaerobically at 37 degrees C for 48 h, showed excellent survival of all the main groups of faecal bacteria. 2. All faecal incubation systems studied generated large amounts of ammonia, particularly those in which bacterial counts fell during incubation. As normal faeces contain negligible amounts of urea this ammonia must have b...

A challenging aspect of ASFV control in wild boar populations is the design and implementation of effective surveillance and monitoring programmes, both for early warning, and to determine the ongoing epidemiological situation in an infected population. Testing blood samples requires invasive sampling strategies like hunting or capture of wild boar. Besides being biased towards healthy animals,...

AIMS The aims of this study were to evaluate the host-specific distribution of Bacteroidales 16S rRNA gene sequences from human- and animal-related effluents and faeces, and to define a ruminant-specific marker. METHODS AND RESULTS Bacteroidales 16S rRNA gene clone libraries were constructed from samples of effluent (sewage, bovine manure and pig slurry) and faeces (human, bovine, pig and wil...

The aim of this study was to determine the changes of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in faeces of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients compared to healthy subjects. SCFAs such as pyruvic, lactic, formic, acetic, propionic, isobutyric and butyric acids were analyzed by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). This study showed that the level of acetic, 162.0 micromol/g wet faec...

The influence of climate and time of deposition on the colonization of sheep faeces by nematophagous fungi was examined in the Mata Region of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Sheep faeces were collected from the rectums of animals and deposited on pastures of Brachiaria decumbens in the months of July and October 1995 and January and April 1996. Samples of the deposited faeces were recovered 3, 7 an...