260 research outputs found

    Large increase in bloodstream infections with carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter species during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, EU/EEA, 2020 and 2021

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    EARS-Net Study Group (Portugal: Manuela Caniça).EARS-Net Study Group participants: Reinhild Strauss, Karl Mertens, Stefana Sabtcheva, Arjana Tambic Andrasevic, Panagiota Maikanti, Helena Žemličková, Henrik Hasman, Marina Ivanova, Kati Räisänen, Sylvie Maugat, Ines Noll, Kassiani Mellou, Ákos Tóth, Kristján Orri Helgason, Stephen Murchan, Giulia Errico, Ieva Voita, Esther Walser-Domjan, Jolanta Miciulevičienė, Monique Perrin, Elizabeth Anne Scicluna, Sjoukje Hs Woudt, Ørjan Samuelsen, Dorota Żabicka, Manuela Caniça, Gabriel Adrian Popescu, Eva Schréterová, Helena Ribič, Maria Belén Aracil García, Hanna Billström.Bloodstream infections (BSIs) with Acinetobacter species commonly have poor outcomes, especially in intensive care unit (ICU) patients [1]. Acinetobacter spp. is intrinsically resistant to many antimicrobials, and additional acquired resistance further complicates the treatment of serious infections in already vulnerable patient groups. Recent data from the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) show a large and statistically significant increase in reports of Acinetobacter spp. BSIs in the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) during the period from 2017 to 2021 [2]. Most of this increase occurred in 2020 and 2021, the first years of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Here we further explore this trend in a subset of data from laboratories that continuously reported data during that period.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Effect of Re-impacting Debris on the Solidification of the Lunar Magma Ocean

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    Anorthosites that comprise the bulk of the lunar crust are believed to have formed during solidification of a Lunar Magma Ocean (LMO) in which these rocks would have floated to the surface. This early flotation crust would have formed a thermal blanket over the remaining LMO, prolonging solidification. Geochronology of lunar anorthosites indicates a long timescale of LMO cooling, or re-melting and re-crystallization in one or more late events. To better interpret this geochronology, we model LMO solidification in a scenario where the Moon is being continuously bombarded by returning projectiles released from the Moon-forming giant impact. More than one lunar mass of material escaped the Earth-Moon system onto heliocentric orbits following the giant impact, much of it to come back on returning orbits for a period of 100 Myr. If large enough, these projectiles would have punctured holes in the nascent floatation crust of the Moon, exposing the LMO to space and causing more rapid cooling. We model these scenarios using a thermal evolution model of the Moon that allows for production (by cratering) and evolution (solidification and infill) of holes in the flotation crust that insulates the LMO. For effective hole production, solidification of the magma ocean can be significantly expedited, decreasing the cooling time by more than a factor of 5. If hole production is inefficient, but shock conversion of projectile kinetic energy to thermal energy is efficient, then LMO solidification can be somewhat prolonged, lengthening the cooling time by 50% or more

    Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

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    Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a ZZ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 <pT<100< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100 GeV and in the pseudorapidity range 2.5<η<42.5 < \eta < 4. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb1^{-1}. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

    Development of methods for population-based surveillance of influenza

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    When this work was initiated the infectious disease surveillance systems available to public health authorities in Sweden and elsewhere were not providing continuously updated information on individuals stricken by disease unless the individuals sought health care or considerable field work was undertaken. However, continuous information on the incidence, regardless of health care seeking behaviour, is vital when estimating the case fatality rate and societal impact of a disease, and when comparing surveillance results between countries and over time. Furthermore, surveillance that relies on health care may be severely compromised in major emergencies. In 2007 we therefore created a population-based surveillance system that relies on passive surveillance by participants from a random sample of the general population who self-report via an automated telephone service or via the Internet. We chose to initially focus the surveillance on influenza and influenza-like illness and during the experimental phase the effort was confined to Stockholm County, Sweden. We then proceeded to evaluate the surveillance system and its methods, in order to further develop the methods for population-based surveillance of influenza. In Paper I we focused on the participation rates and choices of reporting technologies. We found that both the telephone and web were utilized, and that choice of technology did not affect the reporting. We also found that the surveillance cohort was affected by selection, which should be possible to adjust for to some extent since the surveillance recruits participants with random sampling. In Paper II we focused on the self-reporting. Two validation studies during two influenza seasons and a retrospective questionnaire showed that although the reporting was lacking in sensitivity it exhibited high specificity, and the validity measures were constant over time. Therefore the results could be adjusted for the low sensitivity. The surveillance results also compared well to sentinel surveillance in terms of shape of the epidemic curve. The adjusted influenza-like illness (ILI) incidence yielded by the population-based surveillance data was almost one order of magnitude higher than the weekly incidence proportion of ILI consultations calculated from the Swedish sentinel data, suggesting that the population-based surveillance captured a larger portion of the total incidence. In Paper III and IV we explored whether the population-based surveillance system could collect data that could be applied in analytical cohort studies of risk factors for disease. We focused on the effect of layman-defined hand-washing on acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) incidence, and on the effect of child contacts outside the household on ARI incidence in adults. We found that increased frequency of handwashing, as the layman perceives it, beyond 4 times daily may have little protective effect on ARI and that reducing outside household child contacts may reduce the risk of ARI but only if the individual has few contacts overall. Overall the methods we applied in our population-based surveillance system can produce next-to-real-time estimates of the incidence in the population - without requiring health care seeking or considerable field work, and the surveillance system also renders itself quite well to analytic studies of relevant public health measures, even in connection with a pandemic. Our work also implies that although accuracy and completeness are not absolute requirements for surveillance, in the development of surveillance methods much can be gained by studying these characteristics

    Evaluation of an Internet-Based Monitoring System for Influenza-Like Illness in Sweden

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    <div><p>To complement traditional influenza surveillance with data on disease occurrence not only among care-seeking individuals, the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (SMI) has tested an Internet-based monitoring system (IMS) with self-recruited volunteers submitting weekly on-line reports about their health in the preceding week, upon weekly reminders. We evaluated IMS acceptability and to which extent participants represented the Swedish population. We also studied the agreement of data on influenza-like illness (ILI) occurrence from IMS with data from a previously evaluated population-based system (PBS) with an actively recruited random sample of the population who spontaneously report disease onsets in real-time via telephone/Internet, and with traditional general practitioner based sentinel and virological influenza surveillance, in the 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 influenza seasons. We assessed acceptability by calculating the participation proportion in an invited IMS-sample and the weekly reporting proportion of enrolled self-recruited IMS participants. We compared distributions of socio-demographic indicators of self-recruited IMS participants to the general Swedish population using chi-square tests. Finally, we assessed the agreement of weekly incidence proportions (%) of ILI in IMS and PBS with cross-correlation analyses. Among 2,511 invited persons, 166 (6.6%) agreed to participate in the IMS. In each season, 2,552 and 2,486 self-recruited persons participated in the IMS respectively. The weekly reporting proportion among self-recruited participants decreased from 87% to 23% (2011–2012) and 82% to 45% (2012–2013). Women, highly educated, and middle-aged persons were overrepresented among self-recruited IMS participants (p<0.01). IMS (invited and self-recruited) and PBS weekly incidence proportions correlated strongest when no lags were applied (r = 0.71 and r = 0.69, p<0.05). This evaluation revealed socio-demographic misrepresentation and limited compliance among the self-recruited IMS participants. Yet, IMS offered a reasonable representation of the temporal ILI pattern in the community overall during the 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 influenza seasons and could be a simple tool for collecting community-based ILI data.</p></div

    The Validity of Self-Initiated, Event-Driven Infectious Disease Reporting in General Population Cohorts

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    <div><p>Background</p><p>The 2009/2010 pandemic influenza highlighted the need for valid and timely incidence data. In 2007 we started the development of a passive surveillance scheme based on passive follow-up of representative general population cohorts. Cohort members are asked to spontaneously report all instances of colds and fevers as soon as they occur for up to 9 months. Suspecting that compliance might be poor, we aimed to assess the validity of self-initiated, event-driven outcome reporting over long periods.</p><p>Methods</p><p>During two 8 week periods in 2008 and 2009, 2376 and 2514 cohort members in Stockholm County were sent one-week recall questionnaires, which served as reference method.</p><p>Results</p><p>The questionnaires were completed by 88% and 86% of the cohort members. Whilst the false positive proportion (1–specificity) in the reporting was low (upper bound of the 95% confidence interval [CI] ≤2% in each season), the false negative proportion (failure to report, 1–sensitivity) was considerable (60% [95% CI 52%–67%] in each season). Still, the resulting epidemic curves for influenza-like illness compared well with those from existing General Practitioner-based sentinel surveillance in terms of shape, timing of peak, and year-to-year variation. This suggested that the error was fairly constant.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Passive long-term surveillance through self-initiated, event-driven outcome reporting underestimates incidence rates of common upper respiratory tract infections. However, because underreporting appears predictable, simple corrections could potentially restore validity.</p></div
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