Emerging incidence of candidemia in neonatal intensive care unit and sick newborn care unit in a tertiary care hospital of Eastern India

Background: Candida blood stream infection (BSI) is an important cause of sepsis and sepsis-related mortality. Common risk factors for Candida BSI include very low birth weight, central vascular catheterization (CVC), use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, endotracheal intubation, and prolonged hospital stay. Although C. albicans accounts for Candida BSI among infants, but recent studies have detected a shift towards non-albicans Candida (NAC) species. Aims & Objectives: To isolate and identify different species of candida from blood samples. To find out the antifungal sensitivity pattern of the fungus isolated. To identify various risk factors associated with Candidemia in patient admitted in critical care unit. Methods: BACT/ALERT 3D Paediatric bottle was used for fungal blood culture. Inoculation on Blood agar and Sabourads dextrose agar (SDA) was made from the culture positive bottles. After the growth obtained from SDA, Gram staining, Germ tube test, CHROM agar Candida Medium and Sugar fermentation and biochemical Test kits (KB006 Hi Candida Identification Kit) were used for identification of various Candida Spp. Anti fungal susceptibility test was carried out by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method. Results: Out of 84 different species of Candida, C. albicans were the highest number (32.14%), followed by 23.81% of C. tropicalis, 21.42% C. parapsilosis. Susceptibility for voriconazole, fluconazole and amphotericin B was 85.71%, 75% and 64.28%, respectively. NAC (57 isolates) were more resistant to azole group of antifungal, especially commonly used antifungal like fluconazole (45.6%). Conclusion: Candidemia is a significant problem in Pediatrics age group patients, especially in NICU and SNCU. A gradual but significant epidemiological shift to higher isolation of NCA is being noticed

Advancing Biomedical Frontiers: Unveiling The Potential Of 3d Bioprinting In Organ Regeneration

The advent of 3D bioprinting marks a pivotal moment in biomedical research and healthcare, unlocking a realm of possibilities. This abstract explores the transformative potential of 3D bioprinting technology, its diverse applications in medical domains, and the inherent challenges it faces. 3D bioprinting represents a revolutionary fusion of three-dimensional printing precision with the intricacies of biological materials. This groundbreaking technology revolutionizes the fabrication of intricate, customized structures by layering bioinks containing living cells, biomaterials, and growth factors. These engineered constructs faithfully replicate the complex architecture of native tissues and organs, presenting unprecedented opportunities for progress in regenerative medicine, drug testing, and disease modeling. The versatility of 3D bioprinting extends across various medical fields. In regenerative medicine, the ability to craft tissue grafts and organ substitutes tailored to individual patients has the potential to transform transplantation procedures, overcoming challenges like donor shortages and organ rejection. Additionally, pharmaceutical companies are employing 3D bioprinting to generate functional tissue models for drug testing, reducing reliance on animal testing and speeding up drug development processes. 3D bioprinting represents a transformative technology with the potential to advance healthcare through personalized regenerative solutions, ethical drug testing practices, and an improved understanding of diseases.However, the adoption of 3D bioprinting is not without its challenges. The intricacy of the bioprinting process necessitates a profound understanding of cellular biology, materials science, and engineering. Overcoming hurdles related to ensuring cell viability and functionality within printed structures is paramount, along with the imperative to scale up production for clinical applications. Ethical and regulatory considerations also emerge, particularly in the context of printing human tissues and organs

Prevalence of extended-spectrum beta-lactamases producing isolates obtained from patients of pediatric critical care unit in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Over the past decades, antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria commonly Enterobacteriaceae such as Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae have increased significantly. These microorganisms have great clinical importance because they increase hospital stay of the patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) leading to high morbidity and mortality. Because of their role in increasing morbidity and mortality, this study was performed to isolate extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing Gram-negative bacilli screened by phenotypical method and further projected into molecular characterization by polymerase chain reaction. Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives are to isolate the Gram-negative multidrug-resistant strains from clinically suspected bacterial infections in patients of neonatal, sick newborn, and pediatric ICU and to study antibiotic sensitivity pattern of isolated Gram-negative multidrug-resistant strains with special reference to molecular characterization. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 Gram-negative bacilli were isolated. Screening of ESBL positivity was done by double-disk synergy test (combined disc test method). Their antibiogram profile was interpreted. With the use of designed primers, 26 ESBL isolates each of E. coli and Klebsiella spp. were processed for molecular analysis of beta-lactamase family genes TEM and CTX-M. Results: Within the 100 samples, majority of the isolates (45%) were Klebsiella spp. and 40% was E. coli isolates. Highest ESBL-producing organisms were observed within E. coli (65%). Prevalence bla-TEM gene was highest followed by bla-CTX-M. These ESBL-producing organisms were found to be resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics. With extensive ESBL surveillance and proper usage of antibiotics, this threatening rise of antibiotic resistance can be mitigated. Conclusion: Gram-negative isolates showed high resistance to commonly used antibiotics. Significant proportions of them were MDR strains. Such high antibiotic resistance is associated with significant morbidity and mortality among pediatric population. MDR along with possession of ESBL associated resistance genes among Gram-negative bacilli pose a serious problem in therapeutic management of patients. Our study signifies that there is a high probability of Gram- negative bacilli to be multi-drug resistant and ESBL positive and earliest detection of such cases should be made

Tbet is a critical modulator of FoxP3 expression in autoimmune graft-versus-host disease

CD4+ T-helper subsets drive autoimmune chronic graft-versus-host disease, a major complication after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. However, it remains unclear how specific T-helper subsets contribute to chronic graft-versus-host disease. T-helper type 1 cells are one of the major disease-mediating T-cell subsets and require interferon-γ signaling and Tbet expression for their function. Regulatory T cells on the other hand can inhibit T-helper type 1 cell-mediated responses. Using an established murine model that isolates the autoimmune component of graft-versus-host disease, we hypothesized that T-helper type 1 cells would restrict FoxP3-driven regulatory T cells. Upon transfer into immune-deficient syngeneic hosts, alloreactive Tbx21−/−CD4+ T cells led to marked increases in FoxP3+ cells and reduced clinical evidence of autoimmunity. To evaluate whether peripheral induction contributed to regulatory T-cell predominance, we adoptively transferred Tbx21−/− T cells that consisted of fate mapping for FoxP3: recipients of flow-purified effector cells that were Foxp3− and Tbx21−/− had enhanced T-regulatory-cell predominance during autoimmune graft-versus-host disease. These data directly demonstrated that peripheral T-regulatory-cell induction was inhibited by Tbet. Finally, Tbx21−/− T-regulatory cells cross-regulated autoimmune wild-type T-effector-cell cytokine production in vivo. The Tbet pathway therefore directly impairs T-regulatory-cell reconstitution and is consequently a feasible target in efforts to prevent autoimmune graft-versus-host disease

Performance Assessment of Multiple Classifiers Based on Ensemble Feature Selection Scheme for Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment classification or sentiment analysis has been acknowledged as an open research domain. In recent years, an enormous research work is being performed in these fields by applying various numbers of methodologies. Feature generation and selection are consequent for text mining as the high-dimensional feature set can affect the performance of sentiment analysis. This paper investigates the inability or incompetency of the widely used feature selection methods (IG, Chi-square, and Gini Index) with unigram and bigram feature set on four machine learning classification algorithms (MNB, SVM, KNN, and ME). The proposed methods are evaluated on the basis of three standard datasets, namely, IMDb movie review and electronics and kitchen product review dataset. Initially, unigram and bigram features are extracted by applying n-gram method. In addition, we generate a composite features vector CompUniBi (unigram + bigram), which is sent to the feature selection methods Information Gain (IG), Gini Index (GI), and Chi-square (CHI) to get an optimal feature subset by assigning a score to each of the features. These methods offer a ranking to the features depending on their score; thus a prominent feature vector (CompIG, CompGI, and CompCHI) can be generated easily for classification. Finally, the machine learning classifiers SVM, MNB, KNN, and ME used prominent feature vector for classifying the review document into either positive or negative. The performance of the algorithm is measured by evaluation methods such as precision, recall, and F-measure. Experimental results show that the composite feature vector achieved a better performance than unigram feature, which is encouraging as well as comparable to the related research. The best results were obtained from the combination of Information Gain with SVM in terms of highest accuracy

Synthesis of vertically aligned and tree-like carbon nanostructures

A thin film of a new type of carbon nanostructures is synthesised, by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition. Individual nanostructure has a multi-walled carbon nanotube aligned perpendicular to the surface of the substrate, with carbon films attached to the nanotube like branches, giving it a tree like appearance. Raman spectroscopy confirmed that the material is overall graphitic in nature. Different deposition parameters are varied to understand the growth mechanism of the nanostructures and the factors affecting its morphology. It is understood that in a condition where a higher content of carbon is present in the plasma than for the condition in which aligned carbon nanotubes are formed, the formation of the branches on the carbon nanotubes takes place, resulting in the tree like nanostructures. The material can be deposited in different substrates irrespective of the roughness, the conductivity or the nature of the substrate and exhibits superhydrophobicity. This novel carbon nanostructured thin film with a very high exposed surface area has a potential of application in all fields which require high surface area, structured or superhydrophobic material. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved