An Outbreak of Severe Infections with Community-Acquired MRSA Carrying the Panton-Valentine Leukocidin Following Vaccination

Background: Infections with community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are emerging worldwide. We investigated an outbreak of severe CA-MRSA infections in children following out-patient vaccination. Methods and Findings: We carried out a field investigation after adverse events following immunization (AEFI) were reported. We reviewed the clinical data from all cases. S. aureus recovered from skin infections and from nasal and throat swabs were analyzed by pulse-field gel electrophoresis, multi locus sequence typing, PCR and microarray. In May 2006, nine children presented with AEFI, ranging from fatal toxic shock syndrome, necrotizing soft tissue infection, purulent abscesses, to fever with rash. All had received a vaccination injection in different health centres in one District of Ho Chi Minh City. Eight children had been vaccinated by the same health care worker (HCW). Deficiencies in vaccine quality, storage practices, or preparation and delivery were not found. Infection control practices were insufficient. CA-MRSA was cultured in four children and from nasal and throat swabs from the HCW. Strains from children and HCW were indistinguishable. All carried the Panton-Valentine leukocidine (PVL), the staphylococcal enterotoxin B gene, the gene complex for staphylococcal-cassette-chromosome mec type V, and were sequence type 59. Strain HCM3A is epidemiologically unrelated to a strain of ST59 prevalent in the USA, althoughthey belong to the same lineage. Conclusions. We describe an outbreak of infections with CA-MRSA in children, transmitted by an asymptomatic colonized HCW during immunization injection. Consistent adherence to injection practice guidelines is needed to prevent CA-MRSA transmission in both in- and outpatient settings

High-performance liquid chromatography with time-programmed fluorescence detection for the quantification of Levofloxacin in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid in adults with tuberculous meningitis

An accurate and reliable high-performance liquid chromatography with time-programmed fluorescence detection was developed and validated to measure levofloxacin in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). After solid phase extraction process using Evolute ® ABN 96 fixed well plate; levofloxacin and internal standard-enoxacin were separated using a mobile phase consisting of phosphate buffer 10 mM with 0.025% triethylamine pH 3.0 - acetonitrile (88:12, v/v) on a Purosphere RP-8e column (5 μm, 125 × 4.0mm) at a flow rate of 1.2 mL/min at 35 °C. The excitation/emission wavelengths were set to 269/400 nm and 294/500 nm, for enoxacin and levofloxacin, respectively. The method was linear over the concentration range of 0.02 to 20.0 μg/mL with a limit of detection of 0.01 μg/mL. The relative standard deviation of intra-assay and inter-assay precision for levofloxacin at four quality controls concentrations (0.02, 0.06, 3.0 and 15.0 μg/mL) were less than 7% and the accuracies ranged from 96.75% to 101.9% in plasma, and from 93.00% to 98.67% in CSF. The validated method was successfully applied to quantify levofloxacin in a considerable quantity of plasma (826) and CSF (477) samples collected from 232 tuberculous meningitis patients, and the preliminary intensive pharmacokinetics analysis from 14 tuberculous meningitis patients in Vietnam is described in this paper

Icariin reduces bone loss in a Rankl-induced transgenic medaka (Oryzias latipes) model for osteoporosis

10.1111/jfb.14241JOURNAL OF FISH BIOLOGY9841039-104

A natural product drug discovery pipeline for novel pancreatic cancer therapies : a new cancer research hub for the Hunter region of NSW

Background: The diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (PC) has dire consequences as it presents late and is rapidly progressive. Due to the significant heterogeneity, PC is one of the most devastating of human cancers. Treatment options are limited to surgery and/or treatment with gemcitabine, and regardless of intervention, patient outcomes are modest at best. Novel approaches and new treatments are urgently required, and natural product-derived compounds, such as taxol/paclitaxel, irinotecan and gemcitabine provide justification for their continued investigation for novel drug discoveries. Aims: New therapeutic interventions begin in the laboratory. At the University of Newcastle’s Central Coast Campus, we are aiming to commission an Australian PC screening facility as part of a PC translational treatment pipeline. Our focus is to exploit the unique evolutionary adaptations that natural products have developed to identify biologically active compounds that target aberrant mechanisms driving pancreatic carcinogenesis