Veterinary drugs in drinking water used for pharmaceutical treatments in breeding farms

Water is susceptible to be used for numerous purposes, including edible, both for humans and animals. In the food animal production, drinking water is frequently used as a way to carry out the most common pharmacological treatments. In these cases, there are many variables which could degrade drugs dissolved in this mean, even when properly arranged pharmaceutical formulations are used. In fact, although a product obtains a Marketing Authorization through appropriate laboratory studies both drug stability and solubility, on the other hand the solubility of the same drug in natural water used as a drinking water is not documented. In the present study has been evaluated the dissolution kinetics (at 0 hours and 24 hours) of products, having oxytetracycline and tylosin as active ingredient, used in drinking water samples in order to see how the different physical and chemical factors that characterize the drinking water may affect therapeutic efficacy. In fact, multiple factors, also of little relevance if individually considered, are able to adversely affect the pharmacological treatment carried out in drinking water.

Continuous-Flow Magnetic Separation with Permanent Magnets for Water Treatment

More efficient water treatment technologies would decrease the water bodies’ pollution and the actual intake of water resource. The aim of this thesis is an in-depth analysis of the magnetic separation of pollutants from water by means of a continuous-flow magnetic filter subjected to a field gradient produced by permanent magnets. This technique has the potential to improve times and efficiencies of both urban wastewater treatment plants and drinking water treatment plants. It might also substitute industrial wastewater treatments. This technique combines a physico-chemical phase of adsorption and a magnetic phase of filtration, having the potential to bond magnetite with any conventional adsorbent powder. The removal of both Magnetic Activated Carbons (MACs) and zeolite-magnetite mix with the addition of a coagulant was investigated. Adsorption tests of different pollutants (surfactants, endocrine disruptors, Fe(III), Mn(II), Ca(II)) on these adsorbents were also performed achieving good results. The numerical results concerning the adsorbent removals well reproduced the experimental ones obtained from two different experimental setups. In real situations the treatable flow rates are up to 90 m3/h (2000 m3/d).

Rural development and communication: a community media project in Uttar Pradesh (India)

Loaded with 16% of the world’s population, India is a challenged country. More than a third of its citizens live below the poverty line - on less than a dollar a day. These people have no proper electricity, no proper drinking water supply, no proper sanitary facilities and well over 40% are illiterates. More than 65% live in rural areas and 60% earn their livelihood from agriculture. Only a meagre 3.63% have access to telephone and less than 1% have access to a computer. Therefore, providing access to timely information on agriculture, weather, social, health care, employment, fishing, is of utmost importance to improve the conditions of rural poor. After some introductive chapters, whose function is to provide a comprehensive framework – both theoretical and practical – of the current rural development policies and of the media situation in India and Uttar Pradesh, my dissertation presents the findings of the pilot project entitled “Enhancing development support to rural masses through community media activity”, launched in 2005 by the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lucknow (U.P.) and by the local NGO Bharosa. The project scope was to involve rural people and farmers from two villages of the district of Lucknow (namely Kumhrava and Barhi Gaghi) in a three-year participatory community media project, based on the creation, implementation and use of a rural community newspaper and a rural community internet centre. Community media projects like this one have been rarely carried out in India because the country has no proper community media tradition: therefore the development of the project has been a challenge for the all stakeholders involved.

Development of bionanotechnological strategies for signal enhancement in nucleic acids biosensors

Nucleic acid biosensors represent a powerful tool for clinical and environmental pathogens detection. For applications such as point-of-care biosensing, it is fundamental to develop sensors that should be automatic, inexpensive, portable and require a professional skill of the user that should be as low as possible. With the goal of determining the presence of pathogens when present in very small amount, such as for the screening of pathogens in drinking water, an amplification step must be implemented. Often this type of determinations should be performed with simple, automatic and inexpensive hardware: the use of a chemical (or nanotechnological) isothermal solution would be desirable. My Ph.D. project focused on the study and on the testing of four isothermal reactions which can be used to amplify the nucleic acid analyte before the binding event on the surface sensor or to amplify the signal after that the hybridization event with the probe. Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) and ligation-mediated rolling circle amplification (L-RCA) were investigated as methods for DNA and RNA amplification. Hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and Terminal deoxynucleotidil transferase-mediated amplification were investigated as strategies to achieve the enhancement of the signal after the surface hybridization event between target and probe. In conclusion, it can be said that only a small subset of the biochemical strategies that are proved to work in solution towards the amplification of nucleic acids does truly work in the context of amplifying the signal of a detection system for pathogens. Amongst those tested during my Ph.D. activity, recombinase polymerase amplification seems the best candidate for a useful implementation in diagnostic or environmental applications.

Perfluoroalkylated substances in food matrices: development of mass spectrometry based analytical methods and preliminary monitoring

Perfluoroalkylated substances are a group of chemicals that have been largely employed during the last 60 years in several applications, widely spreading and accumulating in the environment due to their extreme resistance to degradation. As a consequence, they have been found also in various types of food as well as in drinking water, proving that they can easily reach humans through the diet. The available information concerning their adverse effects on health has recently increased the interest towards these contaminants and highlighted the importance of investigating all the potential sources of human exposure, among which diet was proved to be the most relevant. This need has been underlined by the European Union through Recommendation 2010/161/EU: in this document, Member States were called to monitor their presence of in food, producing accurate estimations of human exposure. The purpose of the research presented in this thesis, which is the result of a partnership between an Italian and a French laboratory, was to develop reliable tools for the analysis of these pollutants in food, to be used for generating data on potentially contaminated matrices. An efficient method based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for the detection of 16 different perfluorinated compounds in milk has been validated in accordance with current European regulation guidelines (2002/657/EC) and is currently under evaluation for ISO 17025 accreditation. The proposed technique was applied to cow, powder and human breast milk samples from Italy and France to produce a preliminary monitoring on the presence of these contaminants. In accordance with the above mentioned European Recommendation, this project led also to the development of a promising technique for the quantification of some precursors of these substances in fish. This method showed extremely satisfying performances in terms of linearity and limits of detection, and will be useful for future surveys.

The impact of swine welfare on some qualitative traits of meat and long cured animal derived products

The present dissertation collects the results of three different research trials which have the common aim to understand the effects of swine welfare (both at farm level and during transport) on the main fresh and dry-cured meat characteristics. The first trial was carried out in order to compare the effects of illumination regimes differing in light duration or light intensity on meat and ham quality of Italian heavy pigs. The results of this trial support the conclusion that, within a moderate range of light intensity and given an appropriate dark period for animal rest, an increase of light duration or intensity above the minimum mandatory levels has no negative impact on carcass composition, meat or long-cured hams quality. The second trial was designed with the aim to investigate the effects of water restriction on growth traits, animal welfare and meat and ham quality of liquid-fed heavy pigs. Overall, the parameters analyzed as concerns growth rate, behavioural traits, blood, as well as carcass, fresh meat and cured hams quality were not affected by the absence of fresh drinking water. However, since liquid feeding did not suppress drinker use or drinker manipulation in the experimental groups, water restriction does not appear to be an applicable method to obtain a reduction of water waste. The third trial, which was carried out in Canada, tested the effectiveness of water sprinkling market-weight pigs (115±10Kg BW) before and after transport in reducing the heat stress experienced under commercial transport conditions. Our results show that the water sprinkling protocol proposed may reduce heat stress during transport and improve pork quality, particularly in specific trailer compartments. This body of research supports the general conclusion that swine welfare could be improved in different scenarios through simple and cost-effective means, without negatively affecting the quality of the main animal-derived products.

Toxoplasma gondii in animals and the environment

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite capable of infecting virtually all warm-blooded species, including humans, but cats are the only definitive hosts. Humans or animals acquire T. gondii infection by ingesting food or water contaminated with sporulated oocysts or by ingesting tissue cysts containing bradyzoites. Toxoplasmosis has the highest human incidence among zoonotic parasitic diseases, but it is still considered an underreported zoonosis. The importance of T. gondii primary infection in livestock is related to the ability of the parasite to produce tissue cysts in infected animals, which may represent important sources of infection for humans. Consumption of undercooked mutton and pork are considered important sources of human Toxoplasma gondii. The first aim of this thesis was to develop a rapid and sensitive in- house indirect ELISA for the detection of antibodies against T. gondii in sheep sera. ROC-curve analysis showed high discriminatory power (AUC=0.999) and high sensitivity (99.4%) and specificity (99.8%) of the method. The ELISA was used to test a batch of sheep sera (375) collected in the Forli-Cesena district. The overall prevalence was estimated at 41.9% demonstrating that T. gondii infection is widely distributed in sheep reared in Forli-Cesena district. Since the epidemiological impact of waterborne transmission route of T.gondii to humans is now thought to be more significant than previously believed, the second aim of the thesis was to evaluate PCR based methods for detecting T. gondii DNA in raw and finished drinking water samples collected in Scotland. Samples were tested using a quantitative PCR on 529 bp repetitive elements. Only one raw water sample (0.3%), out of the 358 examined, tested T. gondii positive demonstrating that there is no evidence that tap water is a source of Toxoplasma infection in Scotland.