Retail Chicken Carcasses as a Reservoir of Multidrug-Resistant .

is a major cause of foodborne disease outbreaks worldwide, mainly through poultry. Recently, there has been an increase in multidrug-resistant (MDR) infections globally. The increased drug resistance results in increased costs and poorer health outcomes due to unavailability or delayed treatment. This study aims to determine the prevalence of in retail raw chicken meat and identify their antimicrobial resistance profiles. A total of 270 retail raw chicken carcasses (local and imported) were collected from three hypermarket chains in Qatar between November 2017 and April 2018. Thirty carcasses were contaminated with (11.11%). The prevalence of in locally produced chicken was higher than in imported chicken (OR = 2.56, 95% CI: 1.18-5.53,  = 0.016). No significant differences were found between the prevalence and storage temperature or hypermarket chain. The highest resistance rates in the isolates were reported to tetracycline (73.7%) followed by nitrofurantoin (53.3%), ampicillin (50%), amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, ceftriaxone (26.7%), and ciprofloxacin (23.3%). Eight isolates were potential extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producers, all in imported frozen chicken ( < 0.0001). Additionally, 43.3% of the isolates were MDR and associated with frozen chicken (OR = 16.88, 95% CI: 2.55-111.47,  = 0.002). The findings indicate that while the prevalence of in retail chicken in Qatar is moderate, a large proportion of them are MDR.This research was funded by, Biomedical Research Centre, Qatar University, grant number “BRC-2018-ID-01 to Nahla O. Eltai.

Treatment with decitabine induces the expression of stemness markers, PD-L1 and NY-ESO-1 in colorectal cancer: potential for combined chemoimmunotherapy

Background: The mechanism of tumor immune escape and progression in colorectal cancer (CRC) is widely investigated in-vitro to help understand and identify agents that might play a crucial role in response to treatment and improve the overall survival of CRC patients. Several mechanisms of immune escape and tumor progression, including expression of stemness markers, inactivation of immunoregulatory genes by methylation, and epigenetic silencing, have been reported in CRC, indicating the potential of demethylating agents as anti-cancer drugs. Of these, a chemotherapeutic demethylating agent, Decitabine (DAC), has been reported to induce a dual effect on both DNA demethylation and histone changes leading to an increased expression of target biomarkers, thus making it an attractive anti-tumorigenic drug. Methods: We compared the effect of DAC in primary 1076 Col and metastatic 1872 Col cell lines isolated and generated from patients' tumor tissues. Both cell lines were treated with DAC, and the expression of the NY-ESO-1 cancer-testis antigen, the PD-L1 immunoinhibitory marker, and the CD44, Nanog, KLF-4, CD133, MSI-1 stemness markers were analyzed using different molecular and immunological assays. Results: DAC treatment significantly upregulated stemness markers in both primary 1076 Col and meta-static 1872 Col cell lines, although a lower effect occurred on the latter: CD44 (7.85 fold; ***p = 0.0001 vs. (4.19 fold; *p = 0.0120), Nanog (4.1 fold; ***p < 0.0001 vs.1.69 fold; ***p = 0.0008), KLF-4 (4.33 fold; ***p < 0.0001 vs.2.48 fold; ***p = 0.0005), CD133 (16.77 fold; ***p = 0.0003 vs.6.36 fold; *p = 0.0166), and MSI-1 (2.33 fold; ***p = 0.0003 vs.2.3 fold; ***p = 0.0004), respectively. Interestingly, in the metastatic 1872 Col cells treated with DAC, the expression of both PD-L1 and NY-ESO-1 was increased tenfold (*p = 0.0128) and fivefold (***p < 0.0001), respectively. Conclusions: We conclude that the upregulation of both stemness and immune checkpoint markers by DAC treatment on CRC cells might represent a mechanism of immune evasion. In addition, induction of NY-ESO-1 may represent an immuno-therapeutic option in metastatic CRC patients. Finally, the combination of DAC and anti-PD-1/anti-PD-L1 antibodies treatment should represent a potential therapeutic intervention for this group of patients. 2023, The Author(s).Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library. The study was supported by the Medical Research Center, Academic Health System, at Hamad Medical Corporation as part of the approved funded IRGC project # IRGC-04-SI-17-142. The Open Access funding is provided by Qatar National Library, Doha, Qatar.Scopu