Category: Health

By Sydney Devine

Researchers at the University of Georgia found that pathogens, like salmonella, can survive for at least six months in cookies and crackers. The recent study was prompted by an increased number of outbreaks of foodborne diseases linked to low-water-activity, or dry, foods.

Larry Beuchat, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and researcher in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, led a study to see just how long bacteria that cause foodborne illness can survive in certain foods.

“There have been an increased number of outbreaks of diseases associated with consumption of contaminated dry foods. We wouldn’t expect salmonella to grow in foods that have a very dry environment,” said Beuchat, who works with the Center for Food Safety on the UGA campus in Griffin.

Beuchat and study co-author David Mann, a research professional in the center, found that not only can harmful bacteria survive in dry foods, like cookie and cracker sandwiches, but they can also live for long periods of time.

For the recent study, published in the Journal of Food Protection, researchers used five different serotypes of salmonella that had been isolated from foods involved in previous foodborne outbreaks. “Isolates were from foods with very low moisture content,” Beuchat said.

Focusing on cookie and cracker sandwiches, the researchers put the salmonella into four types of fillings found in cookies or crackers and placed them into storage. The researchers used cheese and peanut butter fillings for the cracker sandwiches and chocolate and vanilla fillings for the cookie sandwiches.

These “are the kind that we find in grocery stores or vending machines,” Beuchat said.

After storing, the UGA scientists determined how long salmonella was able to survive in each filling. There was survival in all types Beuchat said, but salmonella survived longer in some types of the fillings than in others.

“The salmonella didn’t survive as well in the cracker sandwiches as it did in the cookie sandwiches,” Beuchat said.

In some cases, the pathogen was able to survive for at least to six months in the sandwiches.
“That was not expected,” he said.

As Beuchat and other UGA researchers learn about salmonella and other foodborne pathogens, they are “becoming aware that they can survive for unusual lengths of time in dry foods,” he said.

The ability of pathogens to survive in some remarkable settings has researchers considering the next steps for preventing contamination and outbreaks they may cause.

“The next steps would be to test all ingredients that are used in these foods,” Beuchat said. If there is a possibility that foodborne pathogens are present in specific ingredients, then the next step would be to stop the use of those ingredients.

The study, “Survival of Salmonella in Cookie and Cracker Sandwiches Containing Inoculated, Low-Water Activity Fillings,” is available online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26408131.

By Molly Berg

The caffeine in a morning cup of coffee could help improve athletic endurance, according to a new University of Georgia review study.

Authored by Simon Higgins, a third-year doctoral student in kinesiology in the College of Education, the study was published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

To research the issue, Higgins reviewed more than 600 scholarly articles and screened them for those that focused only on caffeinated-coffee conditions, measured the caffeine dose and measured an endurance performance. Of these, nine randomized control trials specifically used coffee to improve endurance.

“Previous research has focused on caffeine itself as an aid to improve endurance,” Higgins said. “Coffee is a popular source of caffeine, so this paper looked at the research surrounding its ergogenic benefits.”

Looking at the nine trials, Higgins found that between 3 and 7 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of caffeine from coffee increased endurance performance by an average of 24 percent. The amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary from 75 mg to more than 150, depending on the variety and how it’s roasted and brewed.

“This is helpful for athletes because coffee is a naturally occurring compound,” Higgins said. “There’s the potential that getting your caffeine by drinking coffee has similar endurance benefits as taking caffeine pills.”

In the nine trials, participants either cycled or ran after drinking coffee. They then exercised vigorously and the results were measured. In a majority of cases, endurance was noticeably improved after the use of coffee.

When researching the effects of caffeine from coffee, Higgins found two important discoveries: that caffeine from coffee has ergogenic benefits—that it enhances physical performance—and that more research is needed on the use of caffeine from coffee versus pure caffeine use.

“While there is a lack of high-quality research on coffee as a source of caffeine, there is an abundance of research on pure caffeine,” he said. “It’s surprising how little we know about caffeine from coffee when its endurance effects could be just as beneficial as pure caffeine.”

Higgins said that coffee shouldn’t be dismissed as less beneficial for endurance. He found that coffee appears to be just as helpful as taking caffeine in the form of powder or tablets.

“There’s a perception that coffee won’t give you the same benefits as pure caffeine,” he said. “New research could mean that athletes could have a cup of coffee versus taking a pill.”

Higgins says that more research is needed before giving official recommendations to athletes, especially since the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary depending on how it’s prepared.

“There is a caveat to athletes using coffee: Be careful because you don’t know how much caffeine is in some coffee, especially when it’s prepared by someone else,” he said. “Athletes should run their caffeine use through their sports dietician as the NCAA lists it as a banned substance.”

Co-authors of the paper are Richard D. Lewis, UGA Foundation Professor in Family and Consumer Sciences, and Chad R. Straight, previously a graduate student at the University of Georgia.

An abstract of the study, “The Effects of Pre-Exercise Caffeinated-Coffee Ingestion on Endurance Performance: An Evidence-Based Review,” is available athttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26568580.

Researchers at the University of Georgia have found links between certain patterns of connections among Facebook friends and drug and alcohol use among college-aged females.

Using network data extracted from the Facebook accounts of 318 female students at UGA, researchers found that the severity of child physical abuse is associated with how central an individual is in her social network, potentially increasing the risk for alcohol abuse.

Assaf Oshri, a developmental psychologist and assistant professor in the human development and family science department within the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, is the study’s lead author. As director of the college’s Youth Development Lab, Oshri studies the links between childhood experiences and the development of risk behaviors in adolescents and young adults.

“If you try to describe the relationship between early child abuse to risk behavior such as substance abuse, it’s interesting to know that online social networks play a role in this mechanism,” Oshri said. “It’s important to note that this is a correlational study, not experimental, so any causal association should not be made out of this data.”

The data extracted from the students’ social networks, with the consent of the user, was mapped to show unique patterns of connections.

Among the key findings of the study:
• Students with a history of childhood physical abuse were found to have more densely interconnected groups of Facebook friends, patterns associated with higher risk for alcohol use and problems.
• Students with a history of childhood sexual abuse were found to have more loosely interconnected groups of Facebook friends, dominated by a few friends. This pattern is associated with decreased alcohol use and problems.
• Facebook users who were embedded in densely interconnected group of friends were more likely to use alcohol than those in more sparsely connected social networks. In other words, the more a Facebook user’s friends are also friends with one another, the more likely she is to misuse alcohol.
• Students who were less important or less connected in their own networks were more likely to use alcohol.

“Leveraging social media to understand risk for addiction is a new, emerging frontier,” said James MacKillop, study co-author and director of the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “Platforms like Facebook provide us with new ways to characterize social networks’ influences on healthy and unhealthy behavior.”

While Oshri noted there are definite limitations to the study, the potential for using online social networks to determine risk and to even create targeted interventions is a possibility.

“Social networks analysis emerges as a powerful methodological tool to better understand the social media peer environment,” said study co-author Itai Himelboim, an associate professor in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“We know that there is a link between child abuse and risk behaviors,” Oshri said. “It seems like social media might either buffer or assist with it.”

The study appears in the November issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Other co-authors are graduate students Josephine Kwon from the Youth Development Lab and Tara Sutton from the UGA department of sociology.

The study, “Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse and Social Network Patterns on Social Media: Associations With Alcohol Use and Problems Among Young Adult Women,” is available online athttp://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2015.76.845.

Geckos resistant to antibiotics may pose risk to pet owners