Effectiveness of a hydrogen peroxide mist (Trophon) system in inactivating healthcare pathogens on surface and endocavitary probes

they are considered noncritical and require at least low-level disinfection between patients. Endocavitary probes (eg, transvaginal, transrectal, or transesophageal probes) are considered semicritical because they have direct contact with mucous membranes (eg, vagina, rectum, or pharynx) or nonintact skin. While one could argue that the use of the probe cover changes the category for the endocavitary probe, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guideline for disinfection and sterilization recommends that a new condom/probe cover should be used for each patient, and because condoms/probe covers and low-level disinfection may fail, high-level disinfection of the probe should be performed. The relevance of this recommendation is reinforced by the finding that sterile ultrasound probe covers and condoms can have a perforation rate from 0% to 81% before and after use. These studies underscore the need for high-level disinfection of endocavitary probes between examinations.Ultrasound probes are used in sonographic scanning and are commonly used as either surface probes or endocavitary probes. Surface probes are used on intact skin, such as the abdome

Bell Measurements and Observables

A general matrix approach to study entangled states is presented, based on operator completeness relations. Bases of unitary operators are considered, with focus on irreducible representations of groups. Bell measurements for teleportation are considered, and robustness of teleportation to various kinds of non idealities is shown.Comment: 11 pages. Elsart styl

Reply to Randal W. Eveland regarding comparative evaluation of the microbicidal activity of low-temperature sterilization technologies to steam sterilization

To the Editor—We thank Dr Randal Eveland, Steris Corporation, for his letter regarding our paper that compared the microbicidal activity of low-temperature sterilization technologies (ie, vaporized hydrogen peroxide [VHP], ethylene oxide [ETO], and hydrogen peroxide gas plasma [HPGP]) to steam sterilization in the presence of salt and serum to simulate inadequate precleaning. As noted in our paper, the literature contains a paucity of information on the comparative microbicidal activity of the sterilization technologies cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for sterilizing medical and surgical devices. We believe that the data from this study will help clinicians in infection prevention assess the robustness of healthcare sterilization technologies and the risk of infection to patients when an uncleaned instrument is unintentionally brought into the operating room or used on a patient

Recent advances in the detection of repeat expansions with short-read next-generation sequencing

Short tandem repeats (STRs), also known as microsatellites, are commonly defined as consisting of tandemly repeated nucleotide motifs of 2-6 base pairs in length. STRs appear throughout the human genome, and about 239,000 are documented in the Simple Repeats Track available from the UCSC (University of California, Santa Cruz) genome browser. STRs vary in size, producing highly polymorphic markers commonly used as genetic markers. A small fraction of STRs (about 30 loci) have been associated with human disease whereby one or both alleles exceed an STR-specific threshold in size, leading to disease. Detection of repeat expansions is currently performed with polymerase chain reaction-based assays or with Southern blots for large expansions. The tests are expensive and time-consuming and are not always conclusive, leading to lengthy diagnostic journeys for patients, potentially including missed diagnoses. The advent of whole exome and whole genome sequencing has identified the genetic cause of many genetic disorders; however, analysis pipelines are focused primarily on the detection of short nucleotide variations and short insertions and deletions (indels). Until recently, repeat expansions, with the exception of the smallest expansion (SCA6), were not detectable in next-generation short-read sequencing datasets and would have been ignored in most analyses. In the last two years, four analysis methods with accompanying software (ExpansionHunter, exSTRa, STRetch, and TREDPARSE) have been released. Although a comprehensive comparative analysis of the performance of these methods across all known repeat expansions is still lacking, it is clear that these methods are a valuable addition to any existing analysis pipeline. Here, we detail how to assess short-read data for evidence of expansions, reviewing all four methods and outlining their strengths and weaknesses. Implementation of these methods should lead to increased diagnostic yield of repeat expansion disorders for known STR loci and has the potential to detect novel repeat expansions

Antimicrobial activity of a continuous visible light disinfection system

We evaluated the ability of high-intensity visible violet light with a peak output of 405 nm to kill epidemiologically important pathogens. The high irradiant light significantly reduced both vegetative bacteria and spores at some time points over a 72-hour exposure period

Optimal local discrimination of two multipartite pure states

In a recent paper, Walgate et. al. demonstrated that any two orthogonal multipartite pure states can be optimally distinguished using only local operations. We utilise their result to show that this is true for any two multiparty pure states, in the sense of inconclusive discrimination. There are also certain regimes of conclusive discrimination for which the same also applies, although we can only conjecture that the result is true for all conclusive regimes. We also discuss a class of states that can be distinguished locally according to any discrimination measure, as they can be locally recreated in the hands of one party. A consequence of this is that any two maximally entangled states can always be optimally discriminated locally, according to any figure of merit.Comment: Published version, results unchanged, although errors in the last proof have been correcte

Communicating Josephson Qubits

We propose a scheme to implement a quantum information transfer protocol with a superconducting circuit and Josephson charge qubits. The information exchange is mediated by an L-C resonator used as a data bus. The main decoherence sources are analyzed in detail.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Antimicrobial activity of a continuously active disinfectant against healthcare pathogens

A novel disinfectant studied using an EPA protocol demonstrated sustained antimicrobial activity (ie, 3-5 log10 reduction) in 5 minutes after 24 hours for Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, Candida auris, carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli and antibiotic-susceptible E. coli, and Enterobacter spp. Only ∼2 log10 reduction occurred with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacter spp and K. pneumoniae, and antibiotic-susceptible K. pneumoniae

Entanglement Dynamics in Two-Qubit Open System Interacting with a Squeezed Thermal Bath via Quantum Nondemolition interaction

We analyze the dynamics of entanglement in a two-qubit system interacting with an initially squeezed thermal environment via a quantum nondemolition system-reservoir interaction, with the system and reservoir assumed to be initially separable. We compare and contrast the decoherence of the two-qubit system in the case where the qubits are mutually close-by (`collective regime') or distant (`localized regime') with respect to the spatial variation of the environment. Sudden death of entanglement (as quantified by concurrence) is shown to occur in the localized case rather than in the collective case, where entanglement tends to `ring down'. A consequence of the QND character of the interaction is that the time-evolved fidelity of a Bell state never falls below $1/\sqrt{2}$, a fact that is useful for quantum communication applications like a quantum repeater. Using a novel quantification of mixed state entanglement, we show that there are noise regimes where even though entanglement vanishes, the state is still available for applications like NMR quantum computation, because of the presence of a pseudo-pure component.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, REVTeX

Epidemiologic characteristics of health care–associated outbreaks and lessons learned from multiple outbreak investigations with a focus on the usefulness of routine molecular analysis

Background: Single outbreaks have often been reported in health care settings, but the frequency of outbreaks at a hospital over time has not been described. We examined epidemiologic features of all health care–associated outbreak investigations at an academic hospital during a 5-year period. Methods: Health care–associated outbreak investigations at an academic hospital (2012-2016) were retrospectively reviewed through data on comprehensive hospital-wide surveillance and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis. Results: Fifty-one health care–associated outbreaks (annual range, 8-15), including 26 (51%) outbreaks in intensive care units (ICUs), and 263 infected-colonized patients involved in these outbreaks were identified. The frequency of pathogens varied by affected location, specifically multidrug-resistant organisms (20/26 outbreaks, 77% in ICUs vs 2/25 outbreaks, 8% in non-ICUs; P <.0001) and gastroenteritis because of Clostridium difficile, norovirus, or adenovirus (1/26 outbreaks, 4% in ICUs vs 17/25 outbreaks, 68% in non-ICUs; P <.0001). Outbreaks occurred in approximately one-third of all units (37%) with some repeated instances of the same pathogens. Of 16 outbreaks caused by a bacterial pathogen evaluated by PFGE, 12 (75%) included some indistinguishable strains, suggesting person-to-person transmission or a common source. Conclusions: This study demonstrated epidemiologic characteristics of multiple outbreaks between ICUs and non-ICUs and the value of molecular typing in understanding the epidemiology of health care–associated outbreaks