Recently, a Trichinella freeze-resistant species (oddball) is believed to be risky for people who live in icy countries (Sharma et al., 2020).

Summary Trichinellosis is a nematode-causing disease distinguished by its continuous transmission in the carnivores and omnivores. Despite effective eradication of the enteral forms, conventional drugs fail to eliminate the migrating and muscle ones. Over the past years, researchers intensified the work on herbal medicines as alternatives or aids to albendazole, the reference drug. This research hypothesizes that the therapeutic agent absorption route could be an evidence-based carrier molecule or auxiliary drug to albendazole. Accordingly, this in vitro study was designed to investigate mainly the phenotypic changes induced by a mono-treatment of albendazole, Lipidium sativum (garden cress), and Commiphora molmol (myrrh). Incredibly, no data were reported on the morphological alterations of T. spiralis larvae treated by any of these drugs. The experimental design tested various concentrations (25, 50, 100, and 200 μg/ml) of each herbal medicine for the lethal effects on the parasite forms for a day (1, 12, and 24h). The data showed that the highest significant mortality rate of the parasite forms was in favor of the concentration 200 μg/ml of both plant extracts in a time-dependent manner. Therefore, albendazole at 200 μg/ml dose was tested in parallel, and all experimental groups were compared to non-treated muscle larvae and worms. Albendazole-treated worms accounted for the least significant (p<0.001) survival rate (2 %), followed by myrrh (5 %), and the adverse was valid for the survival rate of the muscle larvae at that time. None of the larvae/worms was alive after 24 hours of incubation with the 200μg/ml of either treatment. The scanning electron microscope investigation of the experimental groups provided a shred of evidence for different routes of taking up the candidate drugs by the parasite. In conclusion, the results of the previous work in vivo and current in vitro study recommend myrrh over garden cress as a complementary agent of albendazole.

No abstract

C ryptosporidium spp. is the only genus of the subclass Cryptogregaria listed as a major foodborne protozoan parasite among Apicomplexa (Ryan et al., 2016). This intracellular parasite is transmitted by the ingestion of Cryptosporidium cysts through contaminated water and food ( Gerace et al., 2019). Its reproduction and gametes formation develop within the microvillus layer of intestinal epithelial cells in the host's small intestine (Chen et al., 2005) causing watery diarrhea and malabsorption along with histopathological deterioration (Guitard et al., 2006). Persistent Cryptosporidium spp. infection is associated with villus atrophy, crypt hyperplasia, and variable increases in leucocytes in the lamina propria (Klein et al., 2008). The disease was reported with an extensive veterinary and medical impact worldwide (Salama et al., 2020) for being the main agent inducing moderate to severe diarrhea (Costa et al., 2020) in both immunocompetent and immunodeficient hosts (Chique et al., 2020), and due to causing malnutri-research Article Abstract | To investigate the prophylactic and therapeutic potentiality of Egyptian probiotic Lactobacillus reuteri in the cryptosporidiosis model (hereafter home-isolated probiotic). As per the health conditions of the experimental mice, they were deployed into two main batches: immunocompetent and immunocompromised. Each batch comprised three protocols as per the types of the treatment (home-isolated-, commercial probiotics, and Nitazoxanide). A dose of 10 8 colony-forming unit (cfu) Lactobacillus reuteri isolated from the domestic camels and the commercial strain were administered orally on daily basis for 10 days. Then, mice were infected with approximately 1 x 10 4 inoculums of Cryptosporidium cysts with continuous administration of probiotics till the end of the experiment (day 20). The regression decay models were utilized to predict the recovery rate of the experimental mice at days different from the tested ones using the data collected from the Nitazoxanide-different time-scheduled protocol. The response to the treatment by probiotics in the immunocompromised mice is less than that of the immunocompetent mice. Positive outcome results are in favor of the home-isolated probiotic treatment. On the contrary, Nitazoxanide is the treatment with the highest number of cysts recovered from the experimental mice. In a nutshell, the results demonstrate that the home-isolated probiotic is efficient in decolonizing the Cryptosporidium spp. cysts and ameliorating the pathogenicity of the disease. Besides, this research study is shedding the light on the importance of isolating and utilizing a country/region-based Lactobacillus reuteri probiotic for high-efficiency treatment of cryptosporidiosis in immunodeficient cases.

Our objective was to examine if a co-curricular activity incorporated with assessment methods affected students’ competence in a course. Natural Sciences (201) was chosen as a candidate course for this study. Students’ grade breakdown was examined and analyzed using SPSS and MINITAB software over four academic years from Fall 2012-13 to Fall 2015-16. The number of failed male students was significantly lower (p<0.05) in Fall semesters when compared with the number of failed male students in Spring semesters. A further analysis was attempted as an approach to understand the reasons for the remarkable elevation of success in the Fall semesters. Hence, a questionnaire was given to 121 students and the data showed that the ‘Science Communicators Program’, metaphorically the Science Festival, played a key role in the students’ achievements. The excellence of performance in the Natural Sciences course was detected during the Fall semesters. Thus, this research paper recommends the accommodation of off-campus co-curricular activities in other courses taught at the university.