Please find below the summaries of papers in Interface, Biology Letters, Proceedings B and Proceedings A that are due to be published onlinethis week.
Journal of the Royal Society Interface
www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/interface
Factors determining the potential for onward transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease via surgical instruments by Tini Garske, Hester J. T. Ward, Paul Clarke, Robert G. Will and Azra C. Ghani
(doi: 10.1098/rsif.2006.0142)
While the number of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) cases continues to decline, concern has been raised that transmission could occur directly from one person to another through routes including the transfer of blood and shared use of surgical instruments. Here we present data on the surgical procedures undertaken on vCJD patients prior to onset of clinical symptoms, which supports the hypothesis that cases via this route are possible. Our results demonstrate that a key uncertainty determining the scale of an epidemic and whether it is self-sustaining is the number of times a single instrument is re-used, alongside the infectivity of contaminated instruments and the effectiveness of cleaning. A survey into the frequency of re-use of surgical instruments would help reducing these uncertainties.
Contact:
Dr T Garske
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
tini.garske@lshtm.ac.uk
tel. +44 (0)2079588208
Biology Letters
www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/biologyletters
Chimpanzee and felid diet composition is influenced by prey brain size by Dr SMS Shultz and Professor R Dunbar
(doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0519)
The underlying cause of brain evolution and intelligence has been an intriguing, yet elusive, problem. Various explanations hav
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Contact: Clare Kingston
clare.kingston@royalsoc.ac.uk
44-020-745-12508
Royal Society
1-Aug-2006