Failure of Ceftriaxone in an Intravenous Drug User with Invasive Infection Due to Ralstonia pickettii

Abstract. : We report a case of septic arthritis due to Ralstonia pickettii in an intravenous drug user with unfavorable clinical course under antibiotic therapy with ceftriaxone despite in vitro susceptibility to the drug. The treatment failure may have been due to a discrepancy between in vitro and in vivo susceptibility of R. pickettii, or to resistance development mediated by a recently described inducible ß-lactamas

Successful Treatment of Disseminated Nocardiosis Complicated by Cerebral Abscess with Ceftriaxone and Amikacin: Case Report

We report the case of an 85-year-old female patient who suffered from disseminated Nocardia asteroides infection complicated by a cerebral abscess. Treatment with amikacin for 2 weeks and ceftriaxone for 6 weeks led to complete recovery, and there was no recurrence of disease over a follow-up period of 12 months after therapy. The use of ceftriaxone in combination with amikacin might significantly shorten the duration of treatment for patients with disseminated nocardiosis. This combination of antibiotics merits further investigation with use of a larger sample of patient

Lambda-proton correlations in relativistic heavy ion collisions

The prospect of using lambda-proton correlations to extract source sizes in relativistic heavy ion collisions is investigated. It is found that the strong interaction induces a large peak in the correlation function that provides more sensitive source size measurements than two-proton correlations under some circumstances. The prospect of using lambda-proton correlations to measure the time lag between lambda and proton emissions is also studied.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure, revtex style. Two short paragraphs are added at referees' recommendations. Phys. Rev. Lett. in pres

Investigations on latent zoonoses in the context of the Swiss Swein 99 - project

Livestock producers in developed countries, such as pig producers, are facing the challenge to produce high quality products which satisfy their customers. Quality assurance programmes therefore are likely to become more important in the near future (Blaha, 1997). A prerequisite to the development of such programmes is the knowledge of animal health data, including zoonoses. In this context, an epidemiological study of the pig health and productivity in Switzerland, called Schwein 99 , has been initiated. This study has the overall objective to study the health and production profile of swine in a broad approach, where pigs are expected to be followed from birth to slaughter. Thus it will be carried out at three levels, i.e. at the breeding units, the fattening units and the abattoirs, respectively. This paper presents preliminary results from a pilot study carried out prior to the larger project to investigate the importance of selected zoonoses, Salmonella, Yersinia enterocolilica and Mycobacterium avium, in slaughtered healthy pigs

Incompressibility of strange matter

Strange stars calculated from a realistic equation of state (EOS), that incorporate chiral symmetry restoration as well as deconfinement at high density show compact objects in the mass radius curve. We compare our calculations of incompressibility for this EOS with that of nuclear matter. One of the nuclear matter EOS has a continuous transition to ud-matter at about five times normal density. Another nuclear matter EOS incorporates density dependent coupling constants. From a look at the consequent velocity of sound, it is found that the transition to ud-matter seems necessary.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys Lett

Searches for Stable Strangelets in Ordinary Matter: Overview and a Recent Example

Our knowledge on the possible existence in nature of stable exotic particles depends solely upon experimental observation. Guided by this general principle and motivated by theoretical hypotheses on the existence of stable particles of strange quark matter, a variety of experimental searches have been performed. We provide an introduction to the theoretical hypotheses, an overview of the past searches, and a more detailed description of a recent search for helium-like strangelets in the Earth's atmosphere using a sensitive laser spectroscopy method

Molecular dynamics simulation for baryon-quark phase transition at finite temperature and density

We study the baryon-quark phase transition in a molecular dynamics (MD) of quark degrees of freedom at finite temperature and density. The baryon state at low density and temperature, and the deconfined quark state at high density and temperature are reproduced. We investigate the equations of state of matters with different $u$-$d$-$s$ compositions. Then we draw phase diagrams in the temperature-density plane by this simulation. It is found that the baryon-quark transition is sensitive to the quark width.Comment: submitted to EPJ