A scoping review of the detection, epidemiology and control of Cyclospora cayetanensis with an emphasis on produce, water and soil.

Cyclospora cayetanensis is a parasite causing cyclosporiasis (an illness in humans). Produce (fruits, vegetables, herbs), water and soil contaminated with C. cayetanensis have been implicated in human infection. The objective was to conduct a scoping review of primary research in English on the detection, epidemiology and control of C. cayetanensis with an emphasis on produce, water and soil. MEDLINE® (Web of ScienceTM), Agricola (ProQuest), CABI Global Health, and Food Science and Technology Abstracts (EBSCOhost) were searched from 1979 to February 2020. Of the 349 relevant primary research studies identified, there were 75 detection-method studies, 40 molecular characterisation studies, 38 studies of Cyclospora in the environment (33 prevalence studies, 10 studies of factors associated with environmental contamination), 246 human infection studies (212 prevalence/incidence studies, 32 outbreak studies, 60 studies of environmental factors associated with non-outbreak human infection) and eight control studies. There appears to be sufficient literature for a systematic review of prevalence and factors associated with human infection with C. cayetanensis. There is a dearth of publicly available detection-method studies in soil (n = 0) and water (n = 2), prevalence studies on soil (n = 1) and studies of the control of Cyclospora (particularly on produce prior to retail (n = 0)).

Memory for temporal order and conditional associative-learning in patients with Parkinson's disease.

The performance of Parkinson's patients was compared to that of normal controls on memory for temporal order and conditional associative-learning tasks, each of which is sensitive to frontal-lobe dysfunction. Memory for temporal order involved reconstructing the presentation order of each of a series of drawings, words and designs. Recognition of similar stimuli was also examined. Parkinson's patients exhibited poor memory for the relative temporal relations between stimuli, though no group differences were observed in the number of stimuli placed in the correct position. Recognition was intact in the Parkinson's patients, and an absence of correlation between performance on the recognition and temporal order tasks indicates that the poor memory for temporal order is not simply a function of degraded memory for the individual stimuli. The conditional associative-learning task required subjects to learn, either by trial-and-error or with immediate correction, numbers paired with drawings, designs or spatial locations. Parkinson's patients were impaired only when learning by trial-and-error was required. Results suggest that the strategic retrieval processes involved in both memory for temporal order and learning conditional associations by trial-and-error depend on the integrity of the fronto-striatal system, which is known to be affected in Parkinson's disease.

Intercorrelation of clinical tests of verbal memory.

The Wechsler Memory Scale, Buschke Selective Reminding Test, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test were administered to 25 patients with known or suspected cerebral dysfunction. Intercorrelation of subscales revealed generally modest relationships among measures, indicating that there may be considerable variability in an individual's performance across the three tasks. This finding has significant clinical and research implications.