Neisseria meningitidis and cytomegalovirus simultaneous detection in the filmarray meningitis/encephalitis panel and its clinical relevance

A BioFire FilmArray Meningitis/Encephalitis test was performed on a 7-month old child suspected for bacterial meningitis. Two pathogens were detected, Neisseria meningitidis and cytomegalovirus (CMV). We verified the filmarray meningitis/encephalitis test by pan-bacterial assay to test for Neisseria meningitidis and CMV viral load test for the CMV detection. Pan-bacterial confirmed presence of N. meningitidis, but CMV was not detected by the CMV viral load test. Together with the manifestations of high fever, vomiting, diffuse petechial rash, bulging fontanel, and leukocytosis, it is a clear case of meningococcal meningitis, while CMV detection had no clinical relevance

Three-dimensional modeling and diversity analysis reveals distinct AVR recognition sites and evolutionary pathways in wild and domesticated wheat Pm3 R genes

The Pm3 gene confers resistance against wheat powdery mildew. Studies of Pm3 diversity have shown that Pm3 alleles isolated from southern populations of wild emmer wheat located in Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Syria are more diverse and more distant from bread wheat alleles than alleles from the northern wild wheat populations located in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Therefore, southern populations from Israel were studied extensively to reveal novel Pm3 alleles that are absent from the cultivated gene pool. Candidate Pm3 genes were isolated via a polymerase chain reaction cloning approach. Known and newly identified Pm3 genes were subjected to variation analysis and polymorphic amino acid residues were superimposed on a three-dimensional (3D) model of PM3. The region of highest interspecies diversity between Triticum aestivum and T. dicoccoides lies in leucine-rich repeats (LRR) 19 to 24, whereas most intraspecies diversity in T. aestivum is located in LRR 25 to 28. Interestingly, these two regions are separated by one large LRR whose propensity for flexibility facilitates the conformation of the PM3 LRR domain into two differently structured models. The combination of evolutionary and protein 3D structure analysis revealed that Pm3 genes in wild and domesticated wheat show different evolutionary histories which might have been triggered through different interactions with the powdery mildew pathogen

Nationwide Outbreak of Candida auris Infections Driven by COVID-19 Hospitalizations, Israel, 2021–2022

We report an outbreak of Candida auris across multiple healthcare facilities in Israel. For the period of May 2014–May 2022, a total of 209 patients with C. auris infection or colonization were identified. The C. auris incidence rate increased 30-fold in 2021 (p = 0.00015), corresponding in time with surges of COVID-19–related hospitalization. Multilocus sequence typing revealed hospital-level outbreaks with distinct clones. A clade III clone, imported into Israel in 2016, accounted for 48.8% of typed isolates after January 2021 and was more frequently resistant to fluconazole (100% vs. 63%; p = 0.00017) and voriconazole (74% vs. 5.2%; p<0.0001) than were non–clade III isolates. A total of 23% of patients had COVID-19, and 78% received mechanical ventilation. At the hospital level, outbreaks initially involved mechanically ventilated patients in specialized COVID-19 units and then spread sequentially to ventilated non–COVID-19 patients and nonventilated patients