Point prevalence study of antibiotic use in a paediatric hospital in Italy

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Herpes simplex virus 1 encephalitis with normal cerebrospinal fluid after brain radiotherapy in a patient with glioblastoma. A case report and review of literature

Herpes simplex virus encephalitis (HSE) is the most common cause of letal encephalitis and its prevalence appears higher among oncologic patients who undergo brain radiotherapy (RT). We describe a case of 76-year-old woman with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) who developed HSE shortly after brain RT. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis (CSF) was normal and the diagnosis was driven by brain MRI and EEG. Prompt introduction of antiviral therapy improved the clinical picture. We highlight the importance of EEG and brain MRI for the diagnosis and suggest the possibility of antiviral profilaxys in oncologic patients who undergo brain RT

Inducible expression of a Phytolacca heterotepala ribosome-inactivating protein leads to enhanced resistance against major fungal pathogens in tobacco

Plant genetic engineering has long been considered a valuable tool to fight fungal pathogens because it would limit the economically costly and environmentally undesirable chemical methods of disease control. Ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) are potentially useful for plant defense considering their antiviral and antimicrobial activities but their use is limited by their cytotoxic activity. A new gene coding for an RIP isolated from leaves of Phytolacca heterotepala was expressed in tobacco under the control of the wound-inducible promoter of the bean polygalacturonase-inhibiting protein I gene to increase resistance against different fungal pathogens, because an individual RIP isolated from P. heterotepala showed direct antifungal toxicity. Phenotypically normal transgenic lines infected with Alternaria alternata and Botrytis cinerea showed a significant reduction of leaf damage while reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and western analysis indicated the expression of the RIP transgene upon wounding and pathogen attack. This work demonstrates that use of a wound-inducible promoter is useful to limit the accumulation of antimicrobial phytotoxic proteins only in infected areas and that the controlled expression of the PhRIP I gene can be very effective to control fungal pathogens with different phytopathogenic actions

Microbial tracking of multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates in a pediatric hospital setting.

We investigated the clonal relatedness of seven multi-drug-resistant (MDR) Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates, as well as three susceptible K. pneumoniae isolates collected during hospital outbreaks and outbreak-related microbiological surveillance, respectively. The relatedness among K. pneumoniae isolates was assessed by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and automated repetitive-sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) genotyping and the results were compared to a proteomic phenotyping performed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). All typing methods agreed on the generation of three different clusters of K. pneumoniae isogenetic/related MDR strains. After strengthening hospital infection control measures, no other spreading events involving MDR-K. pneumoniae were reported until the end of the observation period. This preliminary investigation suggests that, in a hierarchical approach to bacterial typing, MALDI-TOF MS proteome profiling might offer a fast and valuable preliminary screening tool able to support microbiologists during nosocomial outbreak surveys. Copyright © by BIOLIFE, s.a.s