A study of Acinetobacter infections in a tertiary care hospital in Northeast India

Background: Acinetobacter is an important opportunistic pathogen and is a common cause of hospital acquired infections. Acinetobacter infections are often extremely difficult to treat because of their widespread resistance to the major groups of antibiotics. The study was conducted to determine prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Acinetobacter species isolated from various clinical samples.Methods: Clinical specimens over a period of 2yrs from May 2015 to April 2017 were collected from the patients attending the hospital. Acinetobacter species isolates were identified, and antibiotic susceptibility test was done following standard operative procedures.Results: From 9979 clinical specimens, 3715 were positive for significant bacterial growth of which 111 (2.9%) were culture positive for Acinetobacter spp. Among 111 isolates 109 (98.2%) isolates were Acinetobacter baumanni and 2 (1.8%) were Acinetobacter lwoffii. Maximum isolates were isolated from urine samples 36 (32.4%) and majority of the isolates were from wards (56.7%) giving a probability of increased hospital acquired infections. Maximum resistance was shown by cefipime (80.1%). Imipenem and Meropenem shows resistance of 25.3% and 29.7% respectively. ICU isolates showed extensive resistance in comparison to wards and OPD.Conclusions: Increasing trend of resistance pattern to a large range of antibiotics is a matter of concern. To avoid resistance, antibiotics should be used judiciously, and empirical therapy should be determined for each hospital according to the resistance rates of the hospital. Infection with MDR Acinetobacter species is independently associated with high mortality, emphasizing the need for aggressive infection control strategies

Impact of Online Education and Sentiment Analysis from Twitter Data using Topic Modeling Algorithms

During a pandemic, all industries suffer greatly, and every sector of the world suffers in some way, including the education sector. Internet expressions reflect users' feelings about a product or service. The polarity of information in source data toward a subject under investigation is determined by sentiment analysis processes. The goal of this study is to examine social media expressions about online teaching and learning, as online education will become a part of everyday life in the future. We collected data from Twitter using keywords related to online education and Google form from engineering undergraduate students for prototype implementation. This analysis will assist teachers, parents, and the student community in understanding the benefits and drawbacks of the education industry, allowing for further improvement in educational outcomes. We used aspect-based sentiment analysis and topic modeling to determine sentiment polarity and important topics for education sector stakeholders. To begin, we used TextBlob Python package to determine sentiment polarity, and Bag of Words, LDA and LSA model for discovering topics. After modeling topics from the collected data, topic Coherence is used to assess the degree of semantic similarity between high-scoring words in the topic. The word cloud and LDAvis are used to visualize data. The experimental results are promising and it will assist education stakeholders in addressing the concerns that have been identified as social media expressions to work on

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Role of matrix metalloproteinases in multi-system inflammatory syndrome and acute COVID-19 in children

INTRODUCTION: Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a serious inflammatory sequela of SARS-CoV2 infection. The pathogenesis of MIS-C is vague and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) may have an important role. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are known drivers of lung pathology in many diseases. METHODS: To elucidate the role of MMPs in pathogenesis of pediatric COVID-19, we examined their plasma levels in MIS-C and acute COVID-19 children and compared them to convalescent COVID-19 and children with other common tropical diseases (with overlapping clinical manifestations). RESULTS: Children with MIS-C had elevated levels of MMPs (P < 0.005 statistically significant) in comparison to acute COVID-19, other tropical diseases (Dengue fever, typhoid fever, and scrub typhus fever) and convalescent COVID-19 children. PCA and ROC analysis (sensitivity 84–100% and specificity 80–100%) showed that MMP-8, 12, 13 could help distinguish MIS-C from acute COVID-19 and other tropical diseases with high sensitivity and specificity. Among MIS-C children, elevated levels of MMPs were seen in children requiring intensive care unit admission as compared to children not needing intensive care. Similar findings were noted when children with severe/moderate COVID-19 were compared to children with mild COVID-19. Finally, MMP levels exhibited significant correlation with laboratory parameters, including lymphocyte counts, CRP, D-dimer, Ferritin and Sodium levels. DISCUSSION: Our findings suggest that MMPs play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of MIS-C and COVID-19 in children and may help distinguish MIS-C from other conditions with overlapping clinical presentation

Unique cellular immune signatures of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children

The clinical presentation of MIS-C overlaps with other infectious/non-infectious diseases such as acute COVID-19, Kawasaki disease, acute dengue, enteric fever, and systemic lupus erythematosus. We examined the ex-vivo cellular parameters with the aim of distinguishing MIS-C from other syndromes with overlapping clinical presentations. MIS-C children differed from children with non-MIS-C conditions by having increased numbers of naïve CD8(+) T cells, naïve, immature and atypical memory B cells and diminished numbers of transitional memory, stem cell memory, central and effector memory CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells, classical, activated memory B and plasma cells and monocyte (intermediate and non-classical) and dendritic cell (plasmacytoid and myeloid) subsets. All of the above alterations were significantly reversed at 6–9 months post-recovery in MIS-C. Thus, MIS-C is characterized by a distinct cellular signature that distinguishes it from other syndromes with overlapping clinical presentations. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov clinicaltrial.gov. No: NCT04844242

Evidence for a retroviral insertion in TRPM1 as the cause of congenital stationary night blindness and leopard complex spotting in the horse

Leopard complex spotting is a group of white spotting patterns in horses caused by an incompletely dominant gene (LP) where homozygotes (LP/LP) are also affected with congenital stationary night blindness. Previous studies implicated Transient Receptor Potential Cation Channel, Subfamily M, Member 1 (TRPM1) as the best candidate gene for both CSNB and LP. RNA-Seq data pinpointed a 1378 bp insertion in intron 1 of TRPM1 as the potential cause. This insertion, a long terminal repeat (LTR) of an endogenous retrovirus, was completely associated with LP, testing 511 horses (χ²=1022.00, p<<0.0005), and CSNB, testing 43 horses (χ2=43, p<<0.0005). The LTR was shown to disrupt TRPM1 transcription by premature poly-adenylation. Furthermore, while deleterious transposable element insertions should be quickly selected against the identification of this insertion in three ancient DNA samples suggests it has been maintained in the horse gene pool for at least 17,000 years. This study represents the first description of an LTR insertion being associated with both a pigmentation phenotype and an eye disorder.Rebecca R. Bellone … David L. Adelson, Sim Lin Lim … et al

A study of Acinetobacter infections in a tertiary care hospital in Northeast India

Background: Acinetobacter is an important opportunistic pathogen and is a common cause of hospital acquired infections. Acinetobacter infections are often extremely difficult to treat because of their widespread resistance to the major groups of antibiotics. The study was conducted to determine prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of Acinetobacter species isolated from various clinical samples.Methods: Clinical specimens over a period of 2yrs from May 2015 to April 2017 were collected from the patients attending the hospital. Acinetobacter species isolates were identified, and antibiotic susceptibility test was done following standard operative procedures.Results: From 9979 clinical specimens, 3715 were positive for significant bacterial growth of which 111 (2.9%) were culture positive for Acinetobacter spp. Among 111 isolates 109 (98.2%) isolates were Acinetobacter baumanni and 2 (1.8%) were Acinetobacter lwoffii. Maximum isolates were isolated from urine samples 36 (32.4%) and majority of the isolates were from wards (56.7%) giving a probability of increased hospital acquired infections. Maximum resistance was shown by cefipime (80.1%). Imipenem and Meropenem shows resistance of 25.3% and 29.7% respectively. ICU isolates showed extensive resistance in comparison to wards and OPD.Conclusions: Increasing trend of resistance pattern to a large range of antibiotics is a matter of concern. To avoid resistance, antibiotics should be used judiciously, and empirical therapy should be determined for each hospital according to the resistance rates of the hospital. Infection with MDR Acinetobacter species is independently associated with high mortality, emphasizing the need for aggressive infection control strategies