Clostridium difficile in Retail Meat Products, USA, 2007

To determine the presence of Clostridium difficile, we sampled cooked and uncooked meat products sold in Tucson, Arizona. Forty-two percent contained toxigenic C. difficile strains (either ribotype 078/toxinotype V [73%] or 027/toxinotype III [NAP1 or NAP1-related; 27%]). These findings indicate that food products may play a role in interspecies C. difficile transmission

Severe Community-acquired Pneumonia Due to Staphylococcus aureus, 2003–04 Influenza Season

S. aureus community-acquired pneumonia has been reported from 9 states

A modern network approach to revisiting the positive and negative affective schedule (PANAS) construct validity

Introduction: The factor structure of the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule (PANAS) is still a topic of debate. There are several reasons why using Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) for scale validation is advantageous and can help understand and resolve conflicting results in the factor analytic literature. Objective: The main objective of the present study was to advance the knowledge regarding the factor structure underlying the PANAS scores by utilizing the different functionalities of the EGA method. EGA was used to (1) estimate the dimensionality of the PANAS scores, (2) establish the stability of the dimensionality estimate and of the item assignments into the dimensions, and (3) assess the impact of potential redundancies across item pairs on the dimensionality and structure of the PANAS scores. Method: This assessment was carried out across two studies that included two large samples of participants. Results and Conclusion: In sum, the results are consistent with a two-factor oblique structure.Fil: Flores Kanter, Pablo Ezequiel. Universidad Empresarial Siglo XXI; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Garrido, Luis Eduardo. Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra; República DominicanaFil: Moretti, Luciana Sofía. Universidad Empresarial Siglo XXI; Argentina. Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra; República Dominicana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Medrano, Leonardo. Universidad Empresarial Siglo XXI; Argentina. Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra; República Dominicana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Gender differences in hemispheric asymmetry for face processing

BACKGROUND: Current cognitive neuroscience models predict a right-hemispheric dominance for face processing in humans. However, neuroimaging and electromagnetic data in the literature provide conflicting evidence of a right-sided brain asymmetry for decoding the structural properties of faces. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether this inconsistency might be due to gender differences in hemispheric asymmetry. RESULTS: In this study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 40 healthy, strictly right-handed individuals (20 women and 20 men) while they observed infants' faces expressing a variety of emotions. Early face-sensitive P1 and N1 responses to neutral vs. affective expressions were measured over the occipital/temporal cortices, and the responses were analyzed according to viewer gender. Along with a strong right hemispheric dominance for men, the results showed a lack of asymmetry for face processing in the amplitude of the occipito-temporal N1 response in women to both neutral and affective faces. CONCLUSION: Men showed an asymmetric functioning of visual cortex while decoding faces and expressions, whereas women showed a more bilateral functioning. These results indicate the importance of gender effects in the lateralization of the occipito-temporal response during the processing of face identity, structure, familiarity, or affective content

Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of Acinetobacter spp. by NCCLS Broth Microdilution and Disk Diffusion Methods

Although both broth microdilution (BMD) and disk diffusion (DD) are listed by NCCLS as acceptable methods for testing Acinetobacter spp. for antimicrobial susceptibility, few studies have compared the results generated by the two methods. We tested 196 isolates of Acinetobacter spp. from nine U.S. hospitals and from the Centers for Disease Control culture collection by using BMD and DD and clinically appropriate antimicrobial agents. Categorical results for amikacin, ciprofloxacin, gatifloxacin, gentamicin, imipenem, levofloxacin, meropenem, tobramycin, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole were comparable for the two methods: there was only one very major (VM) error, with tobramycin, and only one major (M) error, with meropenem, when DD results were compared with BMD results. However, VM errors were frequent with the β-lactams and β-lactam-β-lactam inhibitor combinations, while M errors were often observed with tetracyclines. For BMD, tests frequently exhibited subtle growth patterns that were difficult to interpret, especially for β-lactams. If subtle growth (i.e., granular, small button, or “starry” growth) was considered positive, error rates between BMD and DD were unacceptably high for ampicillin-sulbactam (VM error, 9.8%; minor [m] error, 16.1%), piperacillin (VM error, 5.7%; m error, 13.5%), piperacillin-tazobactam (VM error, 9.3%; m error, 12.9%), ceftazidime (VM error, 6.2%; m error, 11.4%), cefepime (VM error, 6.2%; m error, 13.0%), cefotaxime (m error, 21.2%), ceftriaxone (m error, 23.3%), tetracycline (M error, 11.4%; m error, 32.1%), and doxycycline (M error, 2.6%). When subtle growth patterns were ignored, the agreement still did not achieve acceptable levels. To determine if the problems with BMD testing occurred in other laboratories, we sent frozen BMD panels containing β-lactam drugs and nine isolates to six labs with experience in performing BMD and DD. Among these laboratories, cefepime MICs ranged from ≤8 to ≥32 μg/ml for four of the nine strains, confirming the problem in interpreting BMD results. Discrepancies between the categorical interpretations of BMD and DD tests were noted primarily with cefepime and piperacillin, for which the BMD results were typically more resistant. Clinical laboratories should be aware of these discrepancies. At present, there are no data to indicate which method provides more clinically relevant information

\u3ci\u3eClostridium difficile\u3c/i\u3e in Retail Meat Products, USA, 2007

To determine the presence of Clostridium difficile, we sampled cooked and uncooked meat products sold in Tucson, Arizona. Forty-two percent contained toxigenic C. difficile strains (either ribotype 078/toxinotype V [73%] or 027/ toxinotype III [NAP1 or NAP1-related; 27%]). These findings indicate that food products may play a role in interspecies C. difficile transmission

Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis Typing of Oxacillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Isolates from the United States: Establishing a National Database

Oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (ORSA) is a virulent pathogen responsible for both health care-associated and community onset disease. We used SmaI-digested genomic DNA separated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to characterize 957 S. aureus isolates and establish a database of PFGE patterns. In addition to PFGE patterns of U.S. strains, the database contains patterns of representative epidemic-type strains from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia; previously described ORSA clonal-type isolates; 13 vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) isolates, and two high-level vancomycin-resistant, vanA-positive strains (VRSA). Among the isolates from the United States, we identified eight lineages, designated as pulsed-field types (PFTs) USA100 through USA800, seven of which included both ORSA and oxacillin-susceptible S. aureus isolates. With the exception of the PFT pairs USA100 and USA800, and USA300 and USA500, each of the PFTs had a unique multilocus sequence type and spa type motif. The USA100 PFT, previously designated as the New York/Tokyo clone, was the most common PFT in the database, representing 44% of the ORSA isolates. USA100 isolates were typically multiresistant and included all but one of the U.S. VISA strains and both VRSA isolates. Multiresistant ORSA isolates from the USA200, -500, and -600 PFTs have PFGE patterns similar to those of previously described epidemic strains from Europe and Australia. The USA300 and -400 PFTs contained community isolates resistant only to β-lactam drugs and erythromycin. Noticeably absent from the U.S. database were isolates with the previously described Brazilian and EMRSA15 PFGE patterns. These data suggest that there are a limited number of ORSA genotypes present in the United States