Two methods of determining diet botanical composition, microhistological (MH), and stable carbon isotope ratio (CR) analyses were used to determine botanical composition of ingesta and fecal grab samples in steers grazing rhizoma peanut-mixed tropical grass pastures. Three pastures were used over two grazing seasons, 1992 and 1993, in Brooksville, FL. A weighted-disc double-sampling technique w...

We previously reported that the strains of Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EcO157) that survived longer in austere soil environment lacked expression of curli, a fitness trait linked with intestinal colonization. In addition, the proportion of curli-positive variants of EcO157 decreased with repeated soil exposure. Here we evaluated 84 and 176 clinical strains from outbreaks and sporadic infections i...

Fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) indicative of fecal contamination in urban streams and recreational ocean beaches in Santa Barbara, California often exceed recreational water-quality standards. During low flow, FIB and human-specific Bacteroides concentrations in urban streams were associated with point discharges. FIB concentrations varied three-fold during diurnal sampling as a result of small...

Fecal coliform bacteria cause water quality problems for many urban areas across the United States. The objective of this study is to determine if the Irwin Creek and Sugar Creek wastewater treatment plants, located near Charlotte in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, contribute significantly to the fecal coliform concentrations in the creeks. Fecal coliform densities in the wastewater effluen...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have suggested a role for an altered intestinal microbiota in the pathophysiology of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, no consensus has been reached regarding the association between specific enteric bacterial groups and IBS. The aim of this study was to investigate the fecal and mucosal-associated microbiota using two independent techniques in intestinal sample...

BACKGROUND Fecal incontinence is highly prevalent among nursing home residents. Previous nursing home studies have identified co-morbidity associated with fecal incontinence, but as this population is increasingly old and frail, we wanted to see if the rate of fecal incontinence had increased and to investigate correlates of fecal incontinence further. METHODS Cross-sectional study of the ent...

PSARP is currently the most widely-used surgical technique for surgical correction of high and intermediary anorectal malformations, but there is much controversy in the literature about the postoperative evaluation of these cases. We studied 27 cases of anorectal malformations operated with PSARP from clinical and manometric aspects in order to analyze: 1) fecal continence; 2) the relationship...

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has emerged as a highly effective therapy for refractory, recurrent Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), which develops following antibiotic treatments. Intestinal microbiota play a critical role in the metabolism of bile acids in the colon, which in turn have major effects on the lifecycle of C. difficile bacteria. We hypothesized that fecal bile acid c...

The fecal microbiome of cattle plays a critical role not only in animal health and productivity but also in food safety, pathogen shedding, and the performance of fecal pollution detection methods. Unfortunately, most published molecular surveys fail to provide adequate detail about variability in the community structures of fecal bacteria within and across cattle populations. Using massively p...

shiga toxin-producing escherichia coli (stec) are food-borne pathogens primarily associated with the consumption of contaminated ground beef and are an important food safety concern worldwide. stec has been found to produce a family of related cytotoxins known as shiga toxins (stxs). shiga toxins have been classified into two major classes, stx1 and stx2. a single strains of stec can produce st...