Toothbrush microbiomes feature a meeting ground for human oral and environmental microbiota

Abstract Background While indoor microbiomes impact our health and well-being, much remains unknown about taxonomic and functional transitions that occur in human-derived microbial communities once they are transferred away from human hosts. Toothbrushes are a model to investigate the potential response of oral-derived microbiota to conditions of the built environment. Here, we characterize metagenomes of toothbrushes from 34 subjects to define the toothbrush microbiome and resistome and possible influential factors. Results Toothbrush microbiomes often comprised a dominant subset of human oral taxa and less abundant or site-specific environmental strains. Although toothbrushes contained lower taxonomic diversity than oral-associated counterparts (determined by comparison with the Human Microbiome Project), they had relatively broader antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) profiles. Toothbrush resistomes were enriched with a variety of ARGs, notably those conferring multidrug efflux and putative resistance to triclosan, which were primarily attributable to versatile environmental taxa. Toothbrush microbial communities and resistomes correlated with a variety of factors linked to personal health, dental hygiene, and bathroom features. Conclusions Selective pressures in the built environment may shape the dynamic mixture of human (primarily oral-associated) and environmental microbiota that encounter each other on toothbrushes. Harboring a microbial diversity and resistome distinct from human-associated counterparts suggests toothbrushes could potentially serve as a reservoir that may enable the transfer of ARGs.

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Evaluating the effect of change in the built environment on mental health and subjective well-being: a natural experiment

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health ◽

10.1136/jech-2019-213591 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. jech-2019-213591 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bina Ram ◽

Elizabeth S Limb ◽

Aparna Shankar ◽

Claire M Nightingale ◽

Alicja R Rudnicka ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Built Environment ◽

Random Effect ◽

Well Being ◽

Housing Tenure ◽

Subjective Well Being ◽

Group Status ◽

East Village ◽

Health And Well Being ◽

Neighbourhood Perceptions

BackgroundNeighbourhood characteristics may affect mental health and well-being, but longitudinal evidence is limited. We examined the effect of relocating to East Village (the former London 2012 Olympic Athletes’ Village), repurposed to encourage healthy active living, on mental health and well-being.Methods1278 adults seeking different housing tenures in East village were recruited and examined during 2013–2015. 877 (69%) were followed-up after 2 years; 50% had moved to East Village. Analysis examined change in objective measures of the built environment, neighbourhood perceptions (scored from low to high; quality −12 to 12, safety −10 to 10 units), self-reported mental health (depression and anxiety) and well-being (life satisfaction, life being worthwhile and happiness) among East Village participants compared with controls who did not move to East Village. Follow-up measures were regressed on baseline for each outcome with group status as a binary variable, adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, housing tenure and household clustering (random effect).ResultsParticipants who moved to East Village lived closer to their nearest park (528 m, 95% CI 482 to 575 m), in more walkable areas, and had better access to public transport, compared with controls. Living in East Village was associated with marked improvements in neighbourhood perceptions (quality 5.0, 95% CI 4.5 to 5.4 units; safety 3.4, 95% CI 2.9 to 3.9 units), but there was no overall effect on mental health and well-being outcomes.ConclusionDespite large improvements in the built environment, there was no evidence that moving to East Village improved mental health and well-being. Changes in the built environment alone are insufficient to improve mental health and well-being.

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Nature in buildings and health design

Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health ◽

10.1093/med/9780198725916.003.0015 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 247-251

Author(s):

Stephen R. Kellert

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

Human Health ◽

Modern Society ◽

Well Being ◽

Healthcare Facilities ◽

Biophilic Design ◽

Evolutionary Origins ◽

Prevailing Paradigm ◽

Functional Development ◽

Health And Well Being

This chapter discusses a hypothesized inherent human need to affiliate with nature (‘biophilia’), its continuing importance to human health and well-being, and how to meet this need in modern society through design of the built environment, with particular focus on healthcare facilities. The theory of biophilia is introduced, its evolutionary origins, effects on human health and well-being, and impediments to its functional development in modern society, particularly the prevailing paradigm of design of the built environment. The chapter describes the notion of ‘biophilic design’, the attempt to address biophilia in the modern built environment. Principles and practices of biophilic design are delineated. The chapter concludes with a brief description of examples of biophilia and biophilic design in existing healthcare facilities.

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ASaiM-MT: a validated and optimized ASaiM workflow for metatranscriptomics analysis within Galaxy framework

F1000Research ◽

10.12688/f1000research.28608.1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 103 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Subina Mehta ◽

Marie Crane ◽

Emma Leith ◽

Bérénice Batut ◽

Saskia Hiltemann ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Microbial Communities ◽

Human Health ◽

Genetic Material ◽

Human Microbiome ◽

Human Microbiome Project ◽

Taxonomic Composition ◽

Sequencing Technologies ◽

The Galaxy ◽

Next Generation Sequencing Ngs ◽

Ngs Data

The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) aided in understanding the role of microbial communities and the influence of collective genetic material (the ‘microbiome’) in human health and disease. With the evolution of new sequencing technologies, researchers can now investigate the microbiome and map its influence on human health. Advances in bioinformatics methods for next-generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis have helped researchers to gain an in-depth knowledge about the taxonomic and genetic composition of microbial communities. Metagenomic-based methods have been the most commonly used approaches for microbiome analysis; however, it primarily extracts information about taxonomic composition and genetic potential of the microbiome under study, lacking quantification of the gene products (RNA and proteins). Conversely, metatranscriptomics, the study of a microbial community’s RNA expression, can reveal the dynamic gene expression of individual microbial populations and the community as a whole, ultimately providing information about the active pathways in the microbiome. In order to address the analysis of NGS data, the ASaiM analysis framework was previously developed and made available via the Galaxy platform. Although developed for both metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, the original publication demonstrated the use of ASaiM only for metagenomics, while thorough testing for metatranscriptomics data was lacking. In the current study, we have focused on validating and optimizing the tools within ASaiM for metatranscriptomics data. As a result, we deliver a robust workflow that will enable researchers to understand dynamic functional response of the microbiome in a wide variety of metatranscriptomics studies. This improved and optimized ASaiM-metatranscriptomics (ASaiM-MT) workflow is publicly available via the ASaiM framework, documented and supported with training material so that users can interrogate and characterize metatranscriptomic data, as part of larger meta-omic studies of microbiomes.

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Accessing the Neighbourhood: Built Environment Performance for People with Disability

Architecture_MPS ◽

10.14324/111.444.amps.2019v16i1.004 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mary Ann Jackson

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

Research Participation ◽

Well Being ◽

Human Condition ◽

Models Of Disability ◽

Macro Scale ◽

People With Disability ◽

Neighbourhood Scale ◽

Environment Performance ◽

Health And Well Being

In the face of rapid urbanisation, increasing diversity of the human condition, ageing populations, failing infrastructure, and mounting evidence that the built environment affects health and well-being, the existing built environment still fails to meet the needs of people with disability. Nevertheless, in something of a parallel universe, improving built environment ‘sustainability’ performance, via measurement, receives much contemporary attention, and analysing the built environment at micro-scale (buildings), meso-scale (neighbourhood) and macro-scale (city-wide) is undertaken from various multidisciplinary perspectives. But, although built environment performance is already measured in many ways, and community inclusion is considered essential for health and well-being, accessibility performance for people with disability, at neighbourhood scale, is rarely considered. The institutional and medical models of disability help explain the inaccessibility of the existing built environment. On the other hand, the social and human rights models of disability offer insight into improving the accessibility of the existing built environment for people with disability. However, ‘disability’ and ‘built environment’ tend not to mix. People with disability continue to experience lack of meaningful involvement in research, participation in decision-making, partnership equality, and direct influence over policy, with the built environment arena increasingly becoming a private-sector activity. The actors involved, however, have little understanding of either the accessibility needs of people with disability, or the inaccessibility, particularly at neighbourhood scale, of the existing built environment. It is in this context that this paper explores the design, planning and politics of an inaccessible built environment, concluding that assessing the built environment accessibility performance for people with disability, at neighbourhood scale, is an essential component in the process of built environment accessibility improvement. Requiring collaboration between the built environment and disability knowledge domains, a new tool measuring neighbourhood accessibility, the Universal Mobility Index (UMI), has emerged and is undergoing further development.

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Identification of Complex Multidimensional Patterns in Microbial Communities

10.1101/540815 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Golovko George ◽

Khanipov Kamil ◽

Albayrak Levent ◽

Fofanov Yuriy

Keyword(s):

Microbial Communities ◽

Statistical Significance ◽

Source Code ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Human Microbiome ◽

Human Microbiome Project ◽

Site Specific ◽

Information Coefficient ◽

Complex Relationships ◽

Project Data

AbstractMotivationIdentification of complex relationships within members of microbial communities is key to understand and guide microbial transplantation and provide personalized anti-microbial and probiotic treatments. Since members of a given microbial community can be simultaneously involved in multiple relations that altogether will determine their abundance, not all significant relations between organisms are expected to be manifested as visually uninterrupted patterns and be detected using traditional correlation nor mutual information coefficient based approaches.ResultsThis manuscript proposes a pattern specific way to quantify the strength and estimate the statistical significance of two-dimensional co-presence, co-exclusion, and one-way relations patterns between abundance profiles of two organisms which can be extended to three or more dimensional patterns. Presented approach can also be extended by including a variety of physical (pH, temperature, oxygen concentration) and biochemical (antimicrobial susceptibility, nutrient and metabolite concentration) variables into the search for multidimensional patterns. The presented approach has been tested using 2,380 microbiome samples from the Human Microbiome Project resulting in body-site specific networks of statistically significant 2D patterns. We also were able to demonstrate the presence of several 3D patterns in the Human Microbiome Project data.AvailabilityC++ source code for two and three-dimensional patterns, as well as executable files for the Pickle pipeline, are in the attached supplementary [email protected]

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Perceived Environmental, Individual and Social Factors of Long-Distance Collective Walking in Cities

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph15112458 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 15 (11) ◽

pp. 2458 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Peng Yang ◽

Shanshan Dai ◽

Honggang Xu ◽

Peng Ju

Keyword(s):

Personality Traits ◽

Social Factors ◽

Well Being ◽

Influential Factors ◽

Individual Development ◽

Social Perceptions ◽

Long Distance ◽

Positive Social Interaction ◽

Managerial Implications ◽

Health And Well Being

Long-distance collective walking is a popular activity in cities across China. However, related research is limited, creating a research gap to explore participants’ dynamic experience and related influential factors. Therapeutic mobilities theory explores the relationships among walking, health, and well-being from a qualitative perspective. Based on therapeutic mobilities theory, following a systematic process, this study develops a scale to quantitatively estimate the perceived environmental, personal, and social factors that may influence health and well-being. By applying construal level theory, this paper further hypothesizes that personality traits and familiarity moderate environmental, personal, and social perceptions. Data were collected with a paper survey (n = 926) from the “Shenzhen 100 km Walking” event. The findings highlight that long-distance collective walkers have comparatively greater experiences of health and well-being in three aspects: positive social interaction, individual development, and environmental understanding. Personality traits, familiarity, and gender moderate this well-being experience. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

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Analysis of Microbial Communities: An Emerging Tool in Forensic Sciences

Diagnostics ◽

10.3390/diagnostics12010001 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Audrey Gouello ◽

Catherine Dunyach-Remy ◽

Christian Siatka ◽

Jean-Philippe Lavigne

Keyword(s):

Microbial Communities ◽

Human Microbiome ◽

Human Microbiome Project ◽

Relevant Information ◽

Forensic Sciences ◽

Post Mortem Interval ◽

Everyday Objects ◽

Changes Over Time ◽

Identification Tool

The objective of forensic sciences is to find clues in a crime scene in order to reconstruct the scenario. Classical samples include DNA or fingerprints, but both have inherent limitations and can be uninformative. Another type of sample has emerged recently in the form of the microbiome. Supported by the Human Microbiome Project, the characteristics of the microbial communities provide real potential in forensics. They are highly specific and can be used to differentiate and classify the originating body site of a human biological trace. Skin microbiota is also highly specific and different between individuals, leading to its possibility as an identification tool. By extension, the possibilities of the microbial communities to be deposited on everyday objects has also been explored. Other uses include the determination of the post-mortem interval or the analysis of soil communities. One challenge is that the microbiome changes over time and can be influenced by many environmental and lifestyle factors. This review offers an overview of the main methods and applications to demonstrate the benefit of the microbiome to provide forensically relevant information.

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Biophilic Design Applications: Putting Theory and Patterns into Built Environment Practice

KnE Engineering ◽

10.18502/keg.v2i2.596 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 59 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Paul Downton ◽

David Jones ◽

Josh Zeunert ◽

Phillip Roös

Keyword(s):

Biological Sciences ◽

Built Environment ◽

Well Being ◽

Design Strategy ◽

Environment Design ◽

Human Beings ◽

Biophilic Design ◽

Health And Wellbeing ◽

The Usa ◽

Health And Well Being

In 1984 E.O. Wilson (1984) introduced and popularized the Biophilia hypothesis defining biophilia as "the urge to affiliate with other forms of life" (Kellert & Wilson 1995: 416). Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis suggests that there is an instinctivebond between human beings and other living systems. More recently, in the USA, Browning et al (2014) have proposed ‘14 Patterns of Biophilic Design’ within a framework for linking the human biological sciences and nature to built environment design offering a series of tools for enriching design opportunities, and avenues for design applications as a way to effectively enhance the health and well-being of individuals and society. While biophilia is the theory, biophilic design as advocated by Kellert et al (2008) and Beatley (2010) internationally offers a sustainable design strategy that seeks to reconnect people with the ‘natural environment’. Overall, from what little research has been undertaken internationally in the last 10 years, there is a solid understanding as to the applied application of this theory, its principles and processes to built environment design and no research about to how to retrofit the existing urban fabric using this approach. This paper reviews the application of biophilic design in Australia, including the scope of design, health and wellbeing literature, the ‘14 Patterns of Biophilic Design’ and performative measures now unfolding, brings forward a new Biophilic Design Pattern, and considers the value the approach offers to built environment practice as well as to human and non-human occupants.

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COVID-19 and urban planning: Built environment, health, and well-being in Greek cities before and during the pandemic

Cities ◽

10.1016/j.cities.2021.103491 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 103491

Author(s):

Kostas Mouratidis ◽

Athena Yiannakou

Keyword(s):

Urban Planning ◽

Built Environment ◽

Well Being ◽

Health And Well Being

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Overview of “Systematic Reviews” of the Built Environment’s Effects on Mental Health

Journal of Environmental and Public Health ◽

10.1155/2020/9523127 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2020 ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Solange Núñez-González ◽

J. Andrés Delgado-Ron ◽

Christopher Gault ◽

Adriana Lara-Vinueza ◽

Denisse Calle-Celi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Psychological Distress ◽

Built Environment ◽

Quality Assessment ◽

Systematic Reviews ◽

Methodological Quality ◽

Well Being ◽

Evidence Base ◽

Health And Well Being

Good mental health is related to mental and psychological well-being, and there is growing interest in the potential role of the built environment on mental health, yet the evidence base underpinning the direct or indirect effects of the built environment is not fully clear. The aim of this overview is to assess the effect of the built environment on mental health-related outcomes. Methods. This study provides an overview of published systematic reviews (SRs) that assess the effect of the built environment on mental health. We reported the overview according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Databases searched until November 2019 included the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, EMBASE, MEDLINE (OVID 1946 to present), LILACS, and PsycINFO. Two authors independently selected reviews, extracted data, and assessed the methodological quality of included reviews using the Assessing Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews-2 (AMSTAR-2). Results. In total, 357 records were identified from a structured search of five databases combined with the references of the included studies, and eleven SRs were included in the narrative synthesis. Outcomes included mental health and well-being, depression and stress, and psychological distress. According to AMSTAR-2 scores, the quality assessment of the included SRs was categorized as “high” in two SRs and as “critically low” in nine SRs. According to the conclusions of the SRs reported by the authors, only one SR reported a “beneficial” effect on mental health and well-being outcomes. Conclusion. There was insufficient evidence to make firm conclusions on the effects of built environment interventions on mental health outcomes (well-being, depression and stress, and psychological distress). The evidence collected reported high heterogeneity (outcomes and measures) and a moderate- to low-quality assessment among the included SRs.

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