Lifestyle
Important Recall Alert: Expanded Produce Recall Due to Listeria Concerns
In a significant public health alert, the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) has announced an expanded recall of fresh produce supplied by Wiers Farm Inc., based in Huron County. This comes amidst growing concerns about potential listeria contamination, prompting vigilance among consumers shopping at select retailers, including Walmart, Aldi, and Kroger stores across Ohio and several other states.
![people at supermarket. recall](https://i0.wp.com/stmdailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/pexels-photo-27067921.jpeg?resize=740%2C998&ssl=1)
What You Need to Know
On July 22, 2024, Wiers Farm Inc. expanded its voluntary recall to include additional produce items that were packed between July 5 and July 12. While there have been no reported illnesses or consumer complaints to date, the ODA is taking proactive measures to ensure public safety.
Affected Products
The recall includes a variety of retail packaged items and bulk produce sold at various grocery chains. Here’s a comprehensive list of the impacted products:
Retail Packaged Items
Sold at select Walmart stores in multiple states:
- Wiers Farm Bagged Poblano – UPC 073064202581 – 16 oz bag
- Wiers Farm Bagged Cubanelle – UPC 073064201836 – 16 oz bag
- Wiers Farm Bagged Green Beans – UPC 073064200846 – variable weight bag
- Wiers Farm Bagged Salad Cucumber – UPC 073064459619 – 2 lb. bag
- Wiers Farm Bagged Serrano – UPC 073064201829 – 4 oz bag
- Wiers Farm Organic Bell Pepper – UPC 073064201416 – 2 count tray
- Wiers Farm Organic Cucumber – UPC 073064201423 – 2 count tray
- Wiers Farm Organic Yellow Squash – UPC 073064201447 – 2 count tray
- Wiers Farm Organic Zucchini Squash – UPC 073064201430 – 2 count tray
Sold at Aldi stores in Ohio and nearby states:
- Freshire Farms Bagged Green Beans – 16 oz bag
- Freshire Farms Bagged Jalapenos – 8 oz bag
Bulk Retail Items (sold individually or by the pound)
- Anaheim peppers
- Cilantro (sold in bunches)
- Cubanelle peppers
- Whole cucumbers
- Green beans
- Green Bell Pepper
- Habanero peppers
- Hungarian Wax peppers
- Jalapeno peppers
- Mustard Greens (sold in bunches)
- Poblano peppers
- Serrano peppers
- Tomatillos
In Ohio, these bulk items were distributed to Walmart, Kroger, Save-a-Lot, and local food banks in Cleveland and Youngstown.
What Should Consumers Do?
The ODA is urging consumers who may have purchased any of the listed products to discard them immediately. It’s crucial to stay informed, as listeria monocytogenes can lead to serious health issues, particularly in vulnerable populations such as pregnant women, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems. Symptoms of listeriosis can include fever, muscle aches, and gastrointestinal distress—anyone experiencing these symptoms after consuming the recalled products should seek medical attention promptly.
Commitment to Safety
Wiers Farm Inc. has expressed its dedication to resolving this situation and ensuring the safety of its products. The ODA is actively investigating the matter, a response initiated after potential contamination was flagged during routine testing by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Stay Informed
For further inquiries or concerns, consumers can reach out to Wiers Farm at 419-933-2161. It’s essential to stay updated on recalls and food safety alerts to protect your health and the health of your loved ones.
As we navigate through these recalls, let’s remain vigilant and prioritize food safety to ensure a healthy dining experience for everyone. Remember, when in doubt, it’s better to be safe than sorry—check your pantry and fridge today!
Related links:
https://agri.ohio.gov/divisions/food-safety/recalls/7-16-2024-wiers-farm-inc
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
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Family
Smooth Transition: 3 tips to prepare for the new school year
![](https://i0.wp.com/d2z0g7klazfonw.cloudfront.net/production/additional_images/23410/16969-back-to-school-routine-detail-intro-image.jpg?w=740&ssl=1)
(Family Features) Whether your child is starting school for the first time or simply returning at a new grade level, preparations for the school year can feel overwhelming for both students and parents alike.
To help make the back-to-school transition as seamless as possible, consider taking these steps ahead of the academic term.
Set Goals for the School Year
As the new school year approaches, talk with your student about what he or she wants to achieve academically, socially and personally. Whether it’s getting better grades, making new friends or getting involved in extracurricular activities, having clear goals can help your child stay focused and make the most of the school year. To stay organized and track progress along the way, consider creating a list of short-term goals that contribute to his or her long-term objectives.
Practice Healthy Habits
Establishing a routine that incorporates sleep, exercise, self-care and a healthy diet can help set your child on a path toward success. Start by setting consistent sleep and wake times to ensure your student is well-rested and ready to focus during the day. Aim for at least 7-9 hours of sleep each night to support overall well-being.
In addition to sleep, ensure a balanced diet and regular exercise are priorities. Fueling your child’s body with nutritious foods can help boost energy levels and concentration. Also encourage physical activity through sports, exercise classes or going for walks. Don’t forget to make sure your student leaves time for relaxation and self-care. Whether it’s reading a book, practicing a hobby or spending time with friends and family, engaging in enjoyable activities can help recharge the mind and reduce stress.
Organize Schedules and Supplies
Organization is key to a successful school year. Using a planner or calendar to track assignment due dates, exams and extracurriculars can help your student effectively manage his or her time. In addition to organizing schedules, gather the necessary supplies. Make a list of the items he or she will need for each class, such as notebooks, pens, a calculator, textbooks and more. Check if any supplies from the previous year can be reused or if purchasing new ones is necessary.
Find more tips to make the school year a successful one at eLivingtoday.com.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
SOURCE:
eLivingtoday.com
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
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health and wellness
RSV Vaccines: What older adults need to know
![RSV](https://i0.wp.com/d2z0g7klazfonw.cloudfront.net/production/additional_images/23524/17196-detail-intro-image.jpg?w=740&ssl=1)
(Family Features) Even though cooler days may seem far off, now is the best time to plan ahead for a healthy winter. One common respiratory illness, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms, but it can be severe and even deadly for older people.
“As we grow older, our immune systems do not work as well and we are more likely to have chronic conditions, which means we are at increased risk of getting very sick from common viruses as we age,” said Alison Barkoff, who leads the Administration for Community Living within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Getting vaccinated is the best protection against fall respiratory viruses like RSV. It can help keep symptoms mild and help keep people out of the hospital.”
Here’s what older Americans need to know about RSV and vaccines this fall, according to the Risk Less. Do More. Public Education Campaign.
Prevention is key. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone 75 years and older get an RSV vaccine. Also, people between 60-74 should get vaccinated if they have conditions such as heart or lung disease, diabetes, obesity or a weakened immune system. The vaccine cuts the risk of hospitalization from RSV by at least half.
People living in nursing homes, assisted living or other long-term care facilities are at even higher risk. There are many people living together in these facilities who have medical conditions that make them more likely to get very sick. While vaccines may not always stop infection, they can prevent severe illness. So, vaccination is very important for residents of long-term care facilities.
RSV vaccines are available. Three RSV vaccines have been approved for older adults by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. You only need a single dose that you can get at any time of the year, but getting the vaccine in the early fall offers the best protection for the late fall and winter, when RSV usually peaks. Getting the vaccine early gives your immune system enough time to build up protection.
RSV vaccines are the best protection. The RSV vaccines have gone through extensive testing. Last year, more than 20 million older adults were vaccinated safely. Mild side effects, such as pain, redness or swelling at the injection site sometimes happen, but they usually go away on their own in a few days. Serious allergic reactions from RSV vaccines are rare.
Prevention is the best option. Respiratory virus vaccines, including RSV vaccines, can help protect older adults from serious illness.
Talk to your doctor and visit cdc.gov/RSV to learn more.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
SOURCE:
United States Department of Health and Human Services
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
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Health
What Enables Herpes Simplex Virus To Become Impervious to Drugs?
Research pinpoints key to the cold sore virus’s ability to evade treatment, offering broader clues on antiviral drug resistance
![herpes simplex virus](https://i0.wp.com/stmdailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/image-1.jpeg?resize=740%2C592&ssl=1)
Newswise — All organisms — from fungi to mammals — have the capacity to evolve and adapt to their environments. But viruses are master shapeshifters with an ability to mutate greater than any other organism. As a result, they can evade treatments or acquire resistance to once-effective antiviral medications.
Is the Herpes Simplex Virus Becoming Impervious to Drugs?
Working with herpes simplex virus (HSV), a new study led by Harvard Medical School researchers sheds light on one of the ways in which the virus becomes resistant to treatment, a problem that could be particularly challenging among people with compromised immune function, including those receiving immune-suppressive treatment and those born with immune deficiencies.
Using a sophisticated imaging technique called cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), the researchers found that how parts of a protein responsible for viral replication move into different positions can alter the virus’s susceptibility to medicines.
The findings, published Aug. 27 in Cell, answer long-standing questions about why certain viruses, but not others, are susceptible to antiviral medications and how viruses become impervious to drugs. The results could inform new approaches that impede viruses’ capacity to outpace effective therapies.
Counterintuitive results
Researchers have long known changes that occur on the parts of a virus where antiviral drugs bind to it can render it resistant to therapy. However, the HMS researchers found that, much to their surprise, this was often not the case with HSV.
Instead, the investigators discovered that protein mutations linked to drug resistance often arise far from the drug’s target location. These mutations involve alterations that change the movements of a viral protein, or enzyme, that allows the virus to replicate itself. This raises the possibility that using drugs to block or freeze the conformational changes of these viral proteins could be a successful strategy for overcoming drug resistance.
“Our findings show that we have to think beyond targeting the typical drug-binding sites,” said the study’s senior author, Jonathan Abraham, associate professor of microbiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “This really helps us see drug resistance in a new light.”
The new findings propel the understanding of how alterations in the conformation of a viral protein — or changes in how the different parts within that protein move when it carries out its function — fuel drug resistance and may be relevant for understanding drug effectiveness and drug resistance in other viruses, the researchers noted.
HSV, estimated to affect billions of people worldwide, is most commonly known as the cause of cold sores and fever blisters, but it can also lead to serious eye infections, brain inflammation, and liver damage in people with compromised immunity. Additionally, HSV can be transmitted from mother to baby via the birth canal during delivery and cause life-threatening neonatal infections.
Clues on resistance rooted in structure and movement
A virus can’t replicate on its own. To do so, viruses must enter a host cell, where they unleash their replication tools — proteins called polymerases — to make copies of themselves.
The current study focused on one such protein — a viral DNA polymerase — crucial for HSV’s ability to reproduce and propagate itself. The ability to carry out its function is rooted in the DNA polymerase’s structure, often likened to a hand with three parts: the palm, the thumb, and the fingers, each carrying out critical functions.
Given their role in enabling replication, these polymerases are critical targets of antiviral drugs, which aim to stop the virus from reproducing itself and halt the spread of infection. The HSV polymerase is the target of acyclovir, the leading antiviral drug for treating HSV infection, and of foscarnet, a second-line drug used for drug-resistant infections. Both drugs work by targeting the viral polymerase but do so in different ways.
Scientists have long struggled to fully understand how alterations in the polymerase render the virus impervious to normal doses of antiviral drugs and, more broadly, why acyclovir and foscarnet are not always effective against the altered forms of the HSV polymerase.
“Over the years, the structures of many polymerases from various organisms have been determined, but we still don’t fully understand what makes some polymerases, but not others, susceptible to certain drugs,” Abraham said. “Our study reveals that how the different parts of the polymerases move, known as their conformational dynamics, is a critical component of their relative susceptibility to drugs.”
Proteins, including polymerases, are not rigid, motionless objects. Instead, they are flexible and dynamic.Composed of amino acids, they initially fold into a steady, three‐dimensional shape known as the native conformation — their baseline structure. But as a result of various bonding and dispersing forces, the different parts of proteins can move when they come into contact with other cellular components as well as through external influences, such as changes in pH or temperature. For example, the fingers of a polymerase protein can open and close, as would the fingers of a hand.
Conformational dynamics — the ability of different parts of a protein to move — allow them to efficiently administer many essential functions with a limited number of ingredients. A better understanding of polymerase conformational dynamics is the missing link between structures and functions, including whether a protein responds to a drug and whether it could become resistant to it down the road.
Unraveling the mystery
Many structural studies have captured DNA polymerases in various distinct conformations. However, a detailed understanding of the impact of polymerase conformational dynamics on drug resistance is lacking. To solve the puzzle, the researchers carried out a series of experiments, focusing on two common polymerase conformations — an open one and a closed one — to determine how each affects drug susceptibility.
First, using cryo-EM, they conducted structural analysis to get high-resolution visualizations of the atomic structures of HSV polymerase in multiple conformations, as well as when bound to the antiviral drugs acyclovir and foscarnet. The drug-bound structures revealed how the two drugs selectively bind polymerases that more readily adopt one conformation versus another. One of the drugs, foscarnet, works by trapping the fingers of the DNA polymerase so that they are stuck in a so-called closed configuration.
Further, structural analysis paired with computational simulations suggested that several mutations that are distant from the sites of drug binding confer antiviral resistance by altering the position of the polymerase fingers responsible for closing onto the drug to halt DNA replication.
The finding was an unexpected twist. Up until now, scientists have believed that polymerases closed partially only when they attached to DNA and closed fully only when they added a DNA building block, a deoxynucleotide. It turns out, however, that HSV polymerase can fully close just by being near DNA. This makes it easier for acyclovir and foscarnet to latch on and stop the polymerase from working, thus halting viral replication.
“I’ve worked on HSV polymerase and acyclovir resistance for 45 years. Back then I thought that resistance mutations would help us understand how the polymerase recognizes features of the natural molecules that the drugs mimic,” said study co-author Donald Coen, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS. “I’m delighted that this work shows that I was wrong and finally gives us at least one clear reason why HSV polymerase is selectively inhibited by the drug.”
Authorship, funding, disclosures
Additional authors included Sundaresh Shankar, Junhua Pan, Pan Yang, Yuemin Bian, Gábor Oroszlán, Zishuo Yu, Purba Mukherjee, David J. Filman, James M. Hogle, Mrinal Shekhar.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (awards R21 AI141940 and R01 AI19838), with additional funding from a Centers for Integrated Solutions in Infectious Diseases grant.
What Enables Herpes Simplex Virus To Become Impervious to Drugs?
Source: Harvard Medical School
Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
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