Urban brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) carry microbial human pathogens but their role as reservoir hosts for helminths of public health importance is less well known. In this study, 42 brown rats trapped on Merseyside were subject to thorough combined helminthological and pathohistological post-mortem examination. Eggs of the rodent-borne zoonotic nematode Calodium hepaticum were initially detected in histological sections of the livers of 9.5% of rats, but overall diagnostic sensitivity increased to 16.6% when entire liver tissue was disrupted and the resulting filtrates were examined for released eggs. In their rat host, mainly trapped inside the dockland, infections with C. hepaticum were associated with a chronic multifocal pyogranulomatous hepatitis with intralesional eggs and peripheral fibrosis. Mean intensity of hepatic C. hepaticum egg infections was 1041 eggs. This is the first report of C. hepaticum in an urban brown rat population in the UK and provides original data for liver egg burdens in this abundant commensal rodent. The zoonotic cestode Rodentolepis nana had a prevalence of infection of 14.3%. Rodent-specific, non-zoonotic helminths found were the spiruroid Mastophorus muris (16.0%) in the stomach, the trichuroid Trichosomoides crassicauda in the urinary bladder (31.0%); the ascarid Heterakis spumosa was the commonest helminth of the large intestine (76.2%). Many millions of brown rats inhabit cities and rural areas of the UK, and the infective stages of the zoonotic worm species, particularly C. hepaticum, are likely to be widely distributed in the environment presenting a threat to public health.

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A number of researchers have found substantial sex, population and group differences in adiposity and fat-distribution patterns, but there is relatively little information on body fat distribution in Aboriginal groups, especially for the indigenous people of Australia. This study, the largest of its kind for Australian Aboriginal people, presents information on adiposity and fat distribution in 425 Yolngu, a group of Aboriginal people living in a number of communities representing a wide range of lifestyles, in northeast Arnhem Land, Australia. Using BMI standards developed for people of European descent, the majority of the individuals in this study were lean, and the incidence of obesity was considerably less than in other Australian groups, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. For the Yolngu in this study the relationship between ageing and adiposity is similar to that reported for tradition-orientated Aboriginal people, as well as for a number of other indigenous groups, viz., while the men maintain their weight into old age, the women, once they are past early adulthood, lose body fat with age. The results from the present study suggest that the age at which the Yolngu women start to gain, and subsequently lose, body fat is associated with differences in degree of acculturation. As has been found in other populations, age- and sex-related differences in body fat distribution occur, but no correlation was found between adiposity and fat distribution. The Aboriginal women and men, however, had a significantly more central distribution of subcutaneous fat than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Our findings have implications for the health and demography of Aboriginal people in general, and the Yolngu in particular, as they continue the transition from hunting and foraging towards a more 'westernized' lifestyle.

The trend toward increasing fatness associated with greater household wealth and higher education has important health implications for Balinese women as they continue their rapid transition from subsistence agriculture towards a more 'western' lifestyle.