-The behaviour of ostrich chicks bred in captivity was studied by using groups with 30 birds in five age groups: from 10 to 40 days of age; from 41 to 60 days of age; from 61 to 90 days of age; from 91 to 120 days of age and from 121 to 150 days of age. Six birds at each age were ringed around one of their feet and observed for four consecutive days for eight hours daily in three periods (in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon), following the "one-zero" method for sampling.The order for observation of behaviour of the six selected birds was performed randomly at every thirty minutes, totalling 16 periods or 80 minutes/bird/day. Fourteen types of behaviour were observed. There were differences among ages for behaviour like standing, walking, running, ingesting stones, ingesting feces, picking and attacking. Non-parametric-tests were used to analyse the behaviour according to age of the bird and to the periods of the day. There was a statistical difference between in the morning and at noon periods on behaviours standing, walking, eating ration and in litophagia, which were observed more frequently at the first hours of the day. When periods of the morning and afternoon were compared, the birds' age had a significant effect on behaviour sand bathing. When the periods noon/afternoon were compared, the behaviours which presented significant differences were walking, running, drinking water, eating ration, litophagia, coprophagia, dancing, sand bathing, whose occurrence was the highest during dusk. It was observed that the behaviour of young ostriches diverge according to the age and to day period.

Trees in the production systems can effectively reduce hot weather-induced stress in the Brazilian

The reduction in time required to identify vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) has gained increased importance during hospital outbreaks. In the present study, we implemented a laboratory protocol to speed up the VRE screening from rectal samples. The protocol combines a medium for selective VRE isolation (VREBAC ® , Probac, São Paulo) and a multiplex PCR for detection and identification of vanA and vanB resistance genes. The screening performance was analyzed in 114 specimens collected from four intensive care units. The swabs were collected at two periods: (1) during a VRE outbreak (February 2006, n=83 patients) and (2) at the post-outbreak period, after adoption of infection control measures (June 2006, n=31 patients). Forty-one/83 VRE (49.4%) and 3/31(9.7%) VRE were found at the first and second period, respectively. All isolates harbored the vanA gene. In both periods, detection of the gene vanA parallels to the minimum inhibitory concentration values of >256 µ µ µ µ µg/mL and >48 µ µ µ µ µg/mL for vancomycin and teicoplanin, respectively. Multiplex PCR and conventional methods agreed in 90.2% for enterococci identification. Besides this accuracy, we also found a remarkable reduction in time to obtain results. Detection of enterococcal species and identification of vancomycin resistance genes were ready in 29.5 hours, in comparison to 72 hours needed by the conventional methods. In conclusion, our protocol identified properly and rapidly enterococci species and vancomycin-resistance genes. The results strongly encourage its adoption by microbiology laboratories for VRE screenning in rectal samples.

No abstract

The animal reservoirs of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) have important role in the epidemiology of the bacteria and resistant genes. The present work searched fecal samples taken off nonhuman primates for the presence of VRE. Resistance profiles, virulence traits, and genetic variability among enterococci isolates were also analyzed. The samples included Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella, n=28) and Common marmoset (Callithrix penicillata, n=37) housed in the Primate Center of the University of Brasília, Brazil. Most individuals were captive monkeys from the Central-West and South-East regions of Brazil (n=48). We collected rectal swabs and carried out selective isolation followed by multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to identify species and resistance genes. No vanA or vanB-containing enterococci were found. The carriage rates ranged from 1.5% for the VanC-type E. casseliflavus and E. gallinarum until 12.3% (n=8) for Enterococcus faecalis. All E. faecalis isolates showed susceptibility to vancomycin, teicoplanin, ampicillin, gentamicin, and streptomycin. The virulence genes ace and esp were prevalent (100.0%, 87.5%). Multilocus variable number of tandem repeats (MLVA) revealed diversity in the number of repeats among E. faecalis isolates and targets, which was higher for espC, efa5, and efa6. We identified six different MLVA genotypes that were divergent from those described in human beings. Also, they were clustered into two genogroups that showed host-specificity for the species Cebus apella or Callithrix penicillata. In conclusion, no vanA-or vanB-containing enterococci were found colonizing those primate individuals. This finding suggested that the primate individuals investigated in our study are not directly involved in the epidemiological chain of high-level vancomycin-resistant genes vanA or vanB in Brazil. Our study also showed that E. faecalis isolated from nonhuman primates carry virulence traits and have ability to spread their lineages among different individuals.