The potential importance of the built-environment microbiome and its impact on human health

There is increasing evidence that interactions between microbes and their hosts not only play a role in determining health and disease but also in emotions, thought, and behavior. Built environments greatly influence microbiome exposures because of their built-in highly specific microbiomes coproduced with myriad metaorganisms including humans, pets, plants, rodents, and insects. Seemingly static built structures host complex ecologies of microorganisms that are only starting to be mapped. These microbial ecologies of built environments are directly and interdependently affected by social, spatial, and technological norms. Advances in technology have made these organisms visible and forced the scientific community and architects to rethink gene-environment and microbe interactions respectively. Thus, built environment design must consider the microbiome, and research involving host-microbiome interaction must consider the built-environment. This paradigm shift becomes increasingly important as evidence grows that contemporary built environments are steadily reducing the microbial diversity essential for human health, well-being, and resilience while accelerating the symptoms of human chronic diseases including environmental allergies, and other more life-altering diseases. New models of design are required to balance maximizing exposure to microbial diversity while minimizing exposure to human-associated diseases. Sustained trans-disciplinary research across time (evolutionary, historical, and generational) and space (cultural and geographical) is needed to develop experimental design protocols that address multigenerational multispecies health and health equity in built environments.

The government of masks in sentinel territories against Covid-19: Dakar and Seine-Saint-Denis

The pandemic of Covid-19 has led to reluctance or resistance to wear a mask in countries that made it compulsory. The acceptance to wear a mask against respiratory diseases depends on conceptions of scientific authority and of the personality in the public space. It has material and symbolic dimensions that can be covered under the term "government of masks". We have questioned populations on these two aspects in territories we call sentinel because they are more exposed than others to emerging infectious diseases: Dakar (Senegal) and Seine-Saint-Denis (France). In France, school students have asked 250 people in public places on their perception of masks following a questionnaire, while in Senegal a team of master students went in 606 people's houses to ask questions following the same questionnaire. Despite these methodological differences, our results show that the perception of the State in these territories influences the uses of masks against Covid-19 at symbolic and material levels. While in Seine-Saint-Denis, the State provides more masks than in Dakar, the trust in the efficacy of mask wearing is lower. From a symbolic point of view, the mask is for many people an intrusion of the State into the private sphere, which hinders physical contact between family members. On the contrary, from the material point of view, the mask is a need that manifests the presence of the welfare State to watch over the health of the population. This comparative study suggests that a State that is at the same time coercive and protective produces a lower level of adherence to mask-wearing recommendations than a State where religious authorities are included in the prescription and where individuals contribute to making masks.

Introduction: Disease Reservoirs: From Colonial Medicine to One Health

The introduction of the special issue "Disease Reservoirs: Anthropological and Historical Approaches" sets out the origins and trajectories of disease reservoir frameworks. First, it charts the emergence and elaborations of the reservoirs concept within and across early 20th-century colonial contexts, emphasising its configuration within imperial projects that sought to identify, map and control spaces of contagion among humans, animals, and pathogens. Following this, it traces the position the reservoir framework assumed within post-colonial practices and imaginaries of global health, with particular reference to the emerging infectious disease paradigm. The introduction shows that, in contemporary usages, while the concept continues to frame animals, humans and their bodies as containers of previously identified pathogens, it also emphasises the imperative of anticipating as-of-yet unknown diseases, harboured in the bodies of certain animals, through networks and techniques of surveillance. Consequently, the introduction argues that the notion of disease reservoirs remains intimately intertwined with concerns over the classification, organization, and management of peoples, pathogens, animals, and space. Finally, the introduction outlines the seven papers that form this special issue, stressing how they dialogue, complement, and challenge previous historical and anthropological approaches to disease reservoirs, with an eye to opening up new avenues for cross-disciplinary exploration.

Veterinary anthropology: Samples from an emerging field

We contribute to the growing field of veterinary humanities by promoting collaboration between veterinarians and anthropologists. Veterinary anthropology as we propose it analyzes the role of animal diseases in social life while questioning notions of animal health and human health. We distinguish three ways for veterinarians to collaborate with anthropologists, which more or less follow a chronological order. One form of collaboration requires anthropologists to bring risk perception or local knowledge on zoonoses identified by veterinarians. A more recent form of collaboration integrates veterinarians and anthropologists around the view of animals as actors in infrastructures of security. Finally, we suggest that, as veterinary expertise and its roles in contemporary societies is becoming an object of anthropological enquiry, a new space for collaboration is unfolding that enables veterinarians to see themselves through that reflexive lens of anthropological attention. Veterinary anthropology can therefore be defined as an anthropology of veterinarians and with veterinarians.

Social representations of animal diseases: anthropological approaches to pathogens crossing species barriers

Debates about emerging infectious diseases often oppose natural conceptions of zoonotic reservoirs with cultural practices bringing humans into contact with animals. This article compares the representations of cross-species pathogens at ontological levels below the opposition between nature and culture. It describes the perceptions of distinctions between interiority and physicality, between wild and domestic, and between sick and dead in three different contexts where human societies manage animal diseases: Australia, Laos and Mongolia. Our article also argues that zoonotic pathogens are one of the entities mobilized by local knowledge to attenuate troubles in ordinary relations with animals, and shows that the conservation of cultural heritage is a tool of mitigation for infectious diseases emerging in animal reservoirs.

The hygiene hypothesis, the COVID pandemic, and consequences for the human microbiome

The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to affect the human microbiome in infected and uninfected individuals, having a substantial impact on human health over the long term. This pandemic intersects with a decades-long decline in microbial diversity and ancestral microbes due to hygiene, antibiotics, and urban living (the hygiene hypothesis). High-risk groups succumbing to COVID-19 include those with preexisting conditions, such as diabetes and obesity, which are also associated with microbiome abnormalities. Current pandemic control measures and practices will have broad, uneven, and potentially long-term effects for the human microbiome across the planet, given the implementation of physical separation, extensive hygiene, travel barriers, and other measures that influence overall microbial loss and inability for reinoculation. Although much remains uncertain or unknown about the virus and its consequences, implementing pandemic control practices could significantly affect the microbiome. In this Perspective, we explore many facets of COVID-19-induced societal changes and their possible effects on the microbiome, and discuss current and future challenges regarding the interplay between this pandemic and the microbiome. Recent recognition of the microbiome's influence on human health makes it critical to consider both how the microbiome, shaped by biosocial processes, affects susceptibility to the coronavirus and, conversely, how COVID-19 disease and prevention measures may affect the microbiome. This knowledge may prove key in prevention and treatment, and long-term biological and social outcomes of this pandemic.

Biosecurity and the ecologies of conservation. An anthropology of collecting practices among virus hunters and birdwatchers

Abstract This article describes prevention and preparedness as different techniques to conserve the past in order to anticipate the future. It relates the emergence of virology and ornithology to the places where samples are accumulated and classified. It then traces the role of anthropology in museums where cultural artifacts are conserved, to reflect on the possible interactions between microbiologists, birdwatchers and anthropologists in the field. It also asks questions about the position of China as a lack or an empty space in the global collections of museums.

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus and human-camel relationships in Qatar

This article investigates camel raising as a possible cause of transmission of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) on the Arabian Peninsula. Drawing on collective research among camel workers in Qatar, it shows the difficulties of asking questions about camel raising in the context of a potential zoonosis, given the secretive nature of herding practices and the values attached to camels in Arab societies. It suggests that the concentration of camels in farms and central markets after the ban of camel grazing as well as the revival of the tradition of drinking camel milk have increased the risks of the transmission of MERS-CoV from camels to humans. The recent valorisation of camels, in the context of the transformation of Qatar from a pastoral economy to a global trade centre, may appear to be an obstacle in the surveillance of MERS-CoV, since camel owners are prone to denying that their animals are infected, but it can be converted into an asset if public health becomes a key element of national pride alongside camel raising.

Zoonosis

n/a

Avian preparedness: simulations of bird diseases and reverse scenarios of extinction in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore

This article describes relations between humans, animals, artefacts, and pathogens in simulations of disasters, taking bird diseases in three Chinese sentinel posts as ethnographic cases. Drawing on distinctions between simulation, ritual, and play, it shows that the engagement of actors in the imaginary of simulations, which they describe as ‘realism’, reflectively reverses the oppositions between humans and nonhumans, active and passive, fiction and reality that shape ordinary life. Borrowing from the anthropology of hunting societies, it argues that simulations of bird diseases, considered as signs of future species extinction, rely on cynegetic techniques of power, in which humans and animals symmetrically shift perspectives, and not only on pastoralist techniques, in which humans are above the population they monitor and sometimes sacrifice.

A Genealogy of Animal Diseases and Social Anthropology (1870-2000)

Culling, vaccinating, and monitoring animals are the three main techniques used in contemporary veterinary public health to manage animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans. Each technique is underpinned by different ontological understandings of how microbes figure in relations between humans and animals. Therefore, animal diseases are not only a question for an applied anthropology but also involve the theoretical core of the discipline: that is, understanding how social causality emerges out of physical causality. To defend this argument, the article describes what Herbert Spencer wrote about foot-and-mouth disease; what William Robertson Smith thought about sacrifice in the context of bovine tuberculosis; how Emile Durkheim took vaccination for smallpox as a metaphor for the pathologies of the social; and what Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote about mad cow disease. The conceptions of the social in the writing of these four authors are analyzed through their understanding of the risk of transmission of animal diseases to humans, moving from prevention to precaution to preparedness.

Under-vaccinated groups in Europe and their beliefs, attitudes and reasons for non-vaccination; two systematic reviews

BACKGROUND

Despite effective national immunisation programmes in Europe, some groups remain incompletely or un-vaccinated ('under-vaccinated'), with underserved minorities and certain religious/ideological groups repeatedly being involved in outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases (VPD). Gaining insight into factors regarding acceptance of vaccination of 'under-vaccinated groups' (UVGs) might give opportunities to communicate with them in a trusty and reliable manner that respects their belief system and that, maybe, increase vaccination uptake. We aimed to identify and describe UVGs in Europe and to describe beliefs, attitudes and reasons for non-vaccination in the identified UVGs.

METHODS

We defined a UVG as a group of persons who share the same beliefs and/or live in socially close-knit communities in Europe and who have/had historically low vaccination coverage and/or experienced outbreaks of VPDs since 1950. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsycINFO databases using specific search term combinations. For the first systematic review, studies that described a group in Europe with an outbreak or low vaccination coverage for a VPD were selected and for the second systematic review, studies that described possible factors that are associated with non-vaccination in these groups were selected.

RESULTS

We selected 48 articles out of 606 and 13 articles out of 406 from the first and second search, respectively. Five UVGs were identified in the literature: Orthodox Protestant communities, Anthroposophists, Roma, Irish Travellers, and Orthodox Jewish communities. The main reported factors regarding vaccination were perceived non-severity of traditional "childhood" diseases, fear of vaccine side-effects, and need for more information about for example risk of vaccination.

CONCLUSIONS

Within each UVG identified, there are a variety of health beliefs and objections to vaccination. In addition, similar factors are shared by several of these groups. Communication strategies regarding these similar factors such as educating people about the risks associated with being vaccinated versus not being vaccinated, addressing their concerns, and countering vaccination myths present among members of a specific UVG through a trusted source, can establish a reliable relationship with these groups and increase their vaccination uptake. Furthermore, other interventions such as improving access to health care could certainly increase vaccination uptake in Roma and Irish travellers.

Liberating Sick Birds: Poststructuralist Perspectives on the Biopolitics of Avian Influenza

How can birds take part in the surveillance of animal diseases under contemporary biosecurity practices? Combining Claude Lévi-Strauss’s analyses of bird sociality and mad cow disease, this article looks at the multiple ways of releasing birds in Hong Kong. It suggests the possibility of an animist perspective on birds in the neoliberal governmentality of epidemics.

[Food safety and animal diseases. The French Food Safety Agency, from mad cow disease to bird flu]

Why has the French food safety agency been particularly mobilized on zoonoses like bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease") or highly pathogenic avian influenza ("bird flu") ? Because sanitary crisis make explicit an ambivalent relationship between humans and animals (animals being perceived alternatively as providers of goods and as bearers of threats), and to the circulation of life in general (the contaminated blood crises being due to the rapprochement of blood giving and blood receiving). The sociology of risks needs therefore to reintegrate the idea of an intention of the risk bearer (risk with enemy), and the sociology of alimentation needs to reintegrate the analysis of the conditions of production. Mad cow disease is the paradigmatic food safety crisis because it brings together the poles of production and consumption, of animals and humans. It therefore belongs to anthropology.

Wannier-Stark states of a quantum particle in 2D lattices

A simple method of calculating the Wannier-Stark resonances in 2D lattices is suggested. Using this method we calculate the complex Wannier-Stark spectrum for a nonseparable 2D potential realized in optical lattices and analyze its general structure. The dependence of the lifetime of Wannier-Stark states on the direction of the static field (relative to the crystallographic axis of the lattice) is briefly discussed.

Total hip arthroplasty using an uncemented femoral component with taper design: outcome at 10-year follow-up

The aim of this study was to assess the clinical and radiological outcome of the cementless-system (CLS) femoral component designed by Spotorno with a taper design. Ninety-four patients (107 hips) were operated on from January 1987 to December 1988. The female/male ratio was 2/1, the mean age was 51 years (range 20-77 years). Clinical follow-up was obtained in 89 hips (83%). Five patients (7 hips, 6.5%) could not be traced. Nine patients (11 hips, 10%) had died before the minimum time of follow-up required for this study (10 years). All these hips still had their stem in place at the time of the last intermediate inquiry. The mean follow-up was 10.3 +/- 0.3 years. No stem required revision. According to the Harris score, 84% of hips were rated good or excellent, 14% fair, and 2% poor. The average Harris hip score was 88 at the time of the last follow-up. Fifteen patients (17%) reported occasional thigh pain. All patients reported complete relief of pain within the first 6 months after the operation. Radiologically, 95% of stems showed stable fixation by bony ingrowth, 5% by fibrous ingrowth. Seven (9%) uncemented acetabular components showed progressive migration. Three of those cups had been replaced in the meantime. Fifty-one (65%) of the CLS stems induced either no change in femoral bone density or only patchy loss of bone density localized to zone 1 or 7 according to Gruen, while 27 (35%) of the hips showed some reduction of bone density in the proximal diaphysis of the femur (zone 2 or 6). Severe progressive osteolysis of the femoral cortex underneath the lesser trochanter was found in 4 hips (5%) with coexistent loosening of the cup. In all of these hips, the Mecron cup had been used. At a mean follow-up of 10 years, the results of the CLS femoral component are comparable with those of modern techniques of cementing in primary total hip arthroplasty and with the long-term outcomes of other uncemented stems with tapered design. The long-term fixation of the cup remains an unsolved problem.

The influence of insulin antibodies on the pharmacokinetics of NPH insulin in patients with type 1 diabetes treated with human insulin

The influence of insulin binding antibodies on the pharmacokinetics of NPH insulin was studied in Type 1 diabetic patients on human insulin. Insulin-antibody binding (B(o) was measured during a screening procedure in 155 Type 1 diabetic patients. In 36 patients, B(o) was < 1.5%, and in 38 patients B(o) was > 10.0%. Of these, 6 patients, group 1 (B(o) < 1.5%) and 8 patients, group 2 (B(o) > 10.0%), respectively, subsequently participated in a pharmacokinetic study. Free insulin and the glucose infusion rate were measured using a euglycaemic clamp after subcutaneous injection of NPH insulin (0.4 U kg-1). The areas under the curve (AUC) of free insulin concentration were smaller for group 2 (p = 0.01) than for group 1 (212.2 +/- 22.0 vs 316.8 +/- 25.3 mU l-1h). The AUCs of the glucose infusion rate were also smaller for group 2 (p < 0.05) than for group 1 (2.50 +/- 0.32 vs 3.58 +/- 0.36 g kg-1). A significant negative correlation exists between the AUCs for free insulin concentration and insulin-antibody binding B(o) (r = 0.76, p = 0.001). The daily insulin dosage was higher in group 2 (p = 0.02) than in group 1 (0.66 +/- 0.03 vs 0.53 +/- 0.03 U kg-1). We conclude that insulin antibodies influence the pharmacokinetics of NPH human insulin. The demonstrable influence on the kinetics of free insulin and glucose utilization leads to a slight increase in daily total insulin requirements.