Prevalence of helminth parasites found on vegetables sold in Maiduguri, Northeastern Nigeria

Background

For a healthy diet, people have been encouraged to eat lots of raw (fresh) vegetables and these can serve as vehicles of transmitting enteric parasitic pathogens throughout the process of planting to consumption. The aim of the present study was to determine the prevalence of helminth parasites found on vegetables sold in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria.

Methods

A total of 1130 samples of fresh salad vegetables obtained from retail markets were examined for helminth eggs and larvae by using standard methods.

Results

Out of the 300 lettuce, 250 cabbage, 200 garden egg, 150 carrot, 130 cucumber and 100 green-peppers samples examined, eggs of Ascaris spp., hookworm, Trichuris spp., Taenia/Echinococcus spp., and Strongyloides stercoralis were detected in 0.5%, 1.2%, 0.5%, 0.5%, and 0.6% respectively of all samples. The lettuce, cabbage, garden-egg, carrot, and cucumber samples were 8.2%, 2.0%, 1.0%, 1.3%, 2.3% contaminated with helminth parasites respectively with an overall prevalence of 3.5%. No helminth parasites were detected in green-peppers. Vegetables from the Gamboru Market were contaminated with helminth parasites more than the other markets (P < 0.05).

Conclusion

Proper washing of vegetables is imperative for a healthy diet as the results of this study showed the presence of helminth parasites from raw vegetables used as salads in Nigeria.     

Effect of Hierarchical Geometries Matching on the Crashworthiness of Honeycomb

Structural hierarchy has become a popular technique to improve the crashworthiness of engineering structures. A study is conducted to explore the interaction between hierarchical geometries and determine the optimum honeycomb configuration that improves crashworthiness. Nine distinct second-order vertex-based hierarchical honeycombs are constructed by iteratively replacing the vertices of a square-based honeycomb with squares, circles, and octagons. Validated finite element models are then established to investigate the out-of-plane crashworthiness performance. Subsequently, the effect of the hierarchical geometry combinations and cell length ratios on the crashworthiness performance of the nine honeycombs is studied. The study showed that the second-order hierarchical honeycomb exhibited superior crashworthiness performance under the same relative density compared to the regular and first-order hierarchical square honeycombs. The study determined that the circle is a suitable matching geometry in the first- and second-order hierarchies for improving the crashworthiness of a square-based honeycomb. Using Complex Proportional Assessment, the Square-Circle-Circle ranked as the optimum structure for crashworthiness application.