This month we bring you two studies on the pediatric use of FecalSwab, and an outstanding paper illustrating the innovations introduced in forensic science by the French gendarmerie:

• Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli strains are a common cause of disease in children. Jenna Diaz et al. evaluated their epidemiology and impact in Haiti, assessing the infection in control and diarrheal subjects with PCR, at enrollment and one month later at follow-up. Plus, the group evaluated the association between specific biomarkers, choline and docosahexaenoic acid, and diarrheal burden. Enterotoxigenic, enteroaggregative, and typical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli prevalence showed to be slightly higher in diarrheal subjects compared to controls, while biomarkers were not associated with the diarrheal burden. Furthermore, multivariate linear regression found a significant association of enterotoxigenic, enteroaggregative E.coli with unfavorable anthropometric measures, with possible synergistic interactions.
• The second study aimed to evaluate the difference in gut microbiomes between preterm and term infants seven days and one month after birth. Using third-generation long-read sequencing and comparing this method with the gold standard, the study showed that the third-generation long-read sequencing results highly correlate with the gold standard, thus suggesting its potential use for pathogen detection in neonates in clinical settings. Finally, a bioinformatic analysis identified features that differed between preterm and term infants which accentuated one month after birth, with the transition of prenatal babies towards a pathogenic bacteria environment and the increase of beneficial bacteria in term babies.
• The third paper is all about the IRCGN. IRCGN is a forensic science institute created by the French Gendarmerie, in charge of working on the crime scene to collect and analyze evidence. During the past 10 years, its experts in genetics have developed innovative engineering technologies to be applied in forensic sciences. This review explores these new ideas and innovations for human identification, which are fully suited to the French Gendarmerie’s needs – and not only: new protocols, mobile labs, NGS, and also our MicroFLOQ!

Discover the complete studies below: