Acinetobacter baumannii infections in a tertiary care hospital in mexico over the past 13 years

Background: Acinetobacter baumannii has evolved from an opportunistic pathogen into a common and persistent nosocomial bacterium capable of causing severe infections during endemic and epidemic periods. Methods: The study period extended from January 1999 to December 2011 and involved patients hospitalized at the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Fray Antonio Alcalde, Jalisco, Mexico. From each patient, a single isolate was obtained, and a total of 3,680 unique isolates were collected. Susceptibility tests were performed according to the guidelines of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Results: A. baumannii has disseminated throughout the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Fray Antonio Alcalde, since 1999. A. baumannii isolates obtained from patients treated in the adult intensive care unit represent the majority of the isolates that have been collected. In addition, A. baumannii was isolated from the adult neurosurgical ward and the adult internal medicine ward, and these isolates were frequently obtained from secretions. A persistent decrease in the susceptibility of A. baumannii isolates to meropenem (92% in 1999 to 12% in 2011), imipenem and amikacin has been observed. Conclusions: A. baumannii became an endemic nosocomial pathogen during the study period at the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Fray Antonio Alcalde, and has exhibited a persistent decrease in susceptibility to all categories of antimicrobial agents over the past 13 years. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel

Actin-binding proteins and signalling pathways associated with the formation and maintenance of dendritic spines [participación de las proteínas de unión a la actina y vías de señalización asociadas a la formación y mantenimiento de las espinas dendréticas]

Background: Acinetobacter baumannii has evolved from an opportunistic pathogen into a common and persistent nosocomial bacterium capable of causing severe infections during endemic and epidemic periods. Methods: The study period extended from January 1999 to December 2011 and involved patients hospitalized at the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Fray Antonio Alcalde, Jalisco, Mexico. From each patient, a single isolate was obtained, and a total of 3,680 unique isolates were collected. Susceptibility tests were performed according to the guidelines of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Results: A. baumannii has disseminated throughout the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Fray Antonio Alcalde, since 1999. A. baumannii isolates obtained from patients treated in the adult intensive care unit represent the majority of the isolates that have been collected. In addition, A. baumannii was isolated from the adult neurosurgical ward and the adult internal medicine ward, and these isolates were frequently obtained from secretions. A persistent decrease in the susceptibility of A. baumannii isolates to meropenem (92% in 1999 to 12% in 2011), imipenem and amikacin has been observed. Conclusions: A. baumannii became an endemic nosocomial pathogen during the study period at the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Fray Antonio Alcalde, and has exhibited a persistent decrease in susceptibility to all categories of antimicrobial agents over the past 13 years. Copyright " 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.",,,,,,"10.1159/000351098",,,"http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12104/39199","http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84879757511&partnerID=40&md5=d2d7df412b868946249f7662665d26b

Artificial Immune System-based algorithm for vehicle routing problem with time window constraint for the delivery of agri-fresh produce

This paper addresses the problem of delivering continuously deteriorating agri-fresh produce from a wholesaler to a number of retailers, within specific time windows. The prime objective is to decide the routes in such a way that the overall cost incurred in transportation, deterioration and penalty is minimised. To model these conflicting objectives a mathematical modelling approach is proposed. The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) is a Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard (NP-hard) problem, without considering the business constraints, and becomes computationally prohibitive with the increase in number of retailers. To solve the VRPTW within feasible time limits, Artificial Immune System (AIS)-based solution methodology is proposed. The algorithm is tested on real-life instances generated from Azadpur wholesale market, New Delhi (India). An experiment is performed on the same problems with other algorithms, such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA), to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach. It is found from the quality of solution and rate of convergence that AIS performed better compared to the other applied approaches