Amikacin, Ceftazidime, and Flucloxacillin against Suspended and Adherent Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus epidermidis in an In Vitro Model of Infection

Bacterial inocula were exposed as suspended cultures or as adherent biofilms on glass beads in a novel in vitro model of infection to oscillating drug concentrations mimicking human serum kinetics during clinical treatment. Amikacin was given once or thrice daily alone or in combination with ceftazidime or flucloxacillin against Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Staphylococcus epidermidis. Killing of adherent bacteria was significantly reduced during single-drug treatment compared with suspended bacteria (P < .001), and β-lactams were more active than amikacin against both suspended and adherent bacteria (P < .01), Amikacin-β-lactam combinations killed the inocula more rapidly and were consistently bactericidal against both suspended and adherent pathogens (P < .05). Once-daily dosing of amikacin produced greater initial killing than thrice daily dosing (P < .05), but both regimens were similarly effective after 48 h. The differences in antibiotic activity against suspended and adherent bacteria may relate to clinical failures in the treatment of foreign-body infections by bacteria sensitive to the administered antibiotics, as determined by standard susceptibility test

Création d'un bar à ongles

Une conversation entre amies, des projets d’avenir, un rêve qui ne demande qu’à être concrétisé, voilà le point de départ de ce travail de Bachelor. Créer son entreprise, être responsable, offrir des postes de travail, est-ce réalisable, rentable ? Le Nail art est à la mode, la formation de styliste ongulaire, de courte durée, est à la portée de tous. Celle-ci terminée, beaucoup de jeunes femmes s’installent à leur compte sans qu’aucune étude de marché et de rentabilité ne soit préalablement effectuée. Ce travail va permettre à l’une d’entre elles de réaliser son projet avec plus de réflexion et de sécurité, en anticipant les difficultés et en faisant les meilleurs choix. La lime d’Or est un institut de beauté proposant des soins de manucure et un service de bar. La force de l’établissement réside dans deux concepts : - Le concept « sans rendez-vous » pour des soins rapides. - Le concept « venir accompagné », soins à deux, pour plus de convivialité. L’étude de marché réalisée auprès de clients potentiels a notamment permis d’estimer la viabilité du concept « sans rendez-vous » ainsi que du concept « venir accompagné » qui se sont révélés prometteurs. Cette enquête a également fait ressortir les habitudes des clients concernant les différents types de soins. La concurrence est relativement élevée en ville de Sion, cependant les services proposés sont différents. Les besoins en ressources humaines sont faibles, la gérante et deux employées à 60% suffisent à faire tourner l’institut au cours des premières années. Ensuite, une troisième employée viendra compléter l’équipe. La gérante et propriétaire de la lime d’Or apportera un capital de 20'000 CHF afin d’acquérir le matériel et les marchandises nécessaires à son exploitation. Après étude du plan financier, l’emprunt de 60'000 CHF, qui couvrira les besoins en liquidités de la première année, sera assuré par quatre membres de sa famille à des conditions plus avantageuses que celles des banques. En effet, il n’y aura pas d’intérêts perçus sur la dette et son remboursement débutera dès la fin de la quatrième année d’activité. Selon le compte d’exploitation prévisionnel, la société réussira à être rentable lors de la deuxième année avec un bénéfice de 28'294 CHF. Ce chiffre évoluera pour atteindre 50'996 CHF à la fin de la troisième année. Le seuil de rentabilité évolue également de manière positive. Il est atteint plus rapidement au cours des années et cela notamment grâce à l’augmentation du taux de fréquentation. Tout au long de ce travail, vous trouverez des explications détaillées qui vous permettront de comprendre le concept ainsi qu’à démontrer la viabilité du projet

Understanding the gastrointestinal tract of the elderly to develop dietary solutions that prevent malnutrition

Although the prevalence of malnutrition in the old age is increasing worldwide a synthetic understanding of the impact of aging on the intake, digestion, and absorption of nutrients is still lacking. This review article aims at filling the gap in knowledge between the functional decline of the aging gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and the consequences of malnutrition on the health status of elderly. Changes in the aging GIT include the mechanical disintegration of food, gastrointestinal motor function, food transit, chemical food digestion, and functionality of the intestinal wall. These alterations progressively decrease the ability of the GIT to provide the aging organism with adequate levels of nutrients, what contributes to the development of malnutrition. Malnutrition, in turn, increases the risks for the development of a range of pathologies associated with most organ systems, in particular the nervous-, muscoskeletal-, cardiovascular-, immune-, and skin systems. In addition to psychological, economics, and societal factors, dietary solutions preventing malnutrition should thus propose dietary guidelines and food products that integrate knowledge on the functionality of the aging GIT and the nutritional status of the elderly. Achieving this goal will request the identification, validation, and correlative analysis of biomarkers of food intake, nutrient bioavailability, and malnutrition.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dairy products and inflammation: a review of the clinical evidence

Inflammation is a major biological process regulating the interaction between organisms and the environment, including the diet. Because of the increase in chronic inflammatory diseases, and in light of the immune-regulatory properties of breastfeeding, the ability of dairy products to modulate inflammatory processes in humans is an important but unresolved issue. Here, we report a systematic review of 52 clinical trials investigating inflammatory markers in relation to the consumption of dairy products. An inflammatory score (IS) was defined to quantitatively evaluate this interaction. The IS was significantly positive for the entire data set, indicating an anti-inflammatory activity in humans. When the subjects were stratified according to their health status, the IS was strongly indicative of an anti-inflammatory activity in subjects with metabolic disorders and of a pro-inflammatory activity in subjects allergic to bovine milk. Stratifying the data by product categories associated both low-fat and high-fat products, as well as fermented products, with an anti-inflammatory activity. Remarkably, the literature is characterized by a large gap in knowledge on bioavailability of bioactive nutrients. Future research should thus better combine food and nutritional sciences to adequately follow the fate of these nutrients along the gastrointestinal and metabolic axes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Influence of raw milk microflora and starter cultures in cheese on protein hydrolysis and peptide generation during digestion

Do bacterial strains in cheese have an impact on the protein hydrolysis during human digestion, and if so, does a higher microbial diversity lead to the generation of a higher number of different peptides after digestion?Cheese bacteria are responsible for the hydrolysis of proteins already during cheese ripening. These bacterial cultures are introduced at different steps of the cheese manufacturing process. First, the raw milk flora that is dependent on the milk heat treatment before the cheese manufacturing process, is a major source of a variety of bacteria. Second, starter cultures, needed for a successful acidification of the cheese curd are added to prevent side fermentations. Third, addition of cultures is made for improving flavor or accelerating the ripening process, depending on the type of cheese. Because of bacterial proteolytic activity, proteins in cheese are partially hydrolyzed, depending on the ripening time and are further digested by gastric and pancreatic proteases, after consumption, to the level of small peptides and free amino acids. In order to elucidate possible differences in proteolysis depending on the presence of different bacteria, Swiss Raclette cheeses were produced either from raw or pasteurized milk with or without addition of a proteolytic bacterial strains (Lactobacillus helveticus) and ripened during 120 days.The microbial diversity and the relative abundance of specific strains in the different cheeses was assessed after 24 hours, 80 and 120 days of cheese ripening by sequencing the hypervariable regions V1-V2 of the 16S rRNA genes. Moreover, protein hydrolysis in the different cheeses was analyzed with gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, and HPLC after in vitro digestion, applying a static (Infogest) and a dynamic (DIDGI®) oro-gastrointestinal in vitro digestion protocol. In order to gain information on the influence of bacterial strains on protein hydrolysis, the 16s meta-genomic and 16s meta-transcriptomic results were correlated with protein and peptide patterns

Serum Metabolites Responding in a Dose-Dependent Manner to the Intake of a High-Fat Meal in Normal Weight Healthy Men Are Associated with Obesity

Although the composition of the human blood metabolome is influenced both by the health status of the organism and its dietary behavior, the interaction between these two factors has been poorly characterized. This study makes use of a previously published randomized controlled crossover acute intervention to investigate whether the blood metabolome of 15 healthy normal weight (NW) and 17 obese (OB) men having ingested three doses (500, 1000, 1500 kcal) of a high-fat (HF) meal can be used to identify metabolites differentiating these two groups. Among the 1024 features showing a postprandial response, measured between 0 h and 6 h, in the NW group, 135 were dose-dependent. Among these 135 features, 52 had fasting values that were significantly different between NW and OB men, and, strikingly, they were all significantly higher in OB men. A subset of the 52 features was identified as amino acids (e.g., branched-chain amino acids) and amino acid derivatives. As the fasting concentration of most of these metabolites has already been associated with metabolic dysfunction, we propose that challenging normal weight healthy subjects with increasing caloric doses of test meals might allow for the identification of new fasting markers associated with obesity

Trimethylamine-N-Oxide Postprandial Response in Plasma and Urine Is Lower After Fermented Compared to Non-Fermented Dairy Consumption in Healthy Adults.

Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) can be produced by the gut microbiota from dietary substrates and is associated with cardiovascular disease. While dairy products contain TMAO precursors, the effect of fermented dairy on TMAO metabolism remains unclear. We used plasma and urine samples collected for two randomised cross-over studies to evaluate the effects of fermented dairy consumption on TMAO metabolism. In Study 1, thirteen healthy young men tested a yogurt and an acidified milk during postprandial tests and a two-week daily intervention. In Study 2, ten healthy adults tested milk and cheese during postprandial tests. TMAO and five related metabolites were measured in plasma and urine by LC-MS/MS and NMR. Faecal microbiota composition was assessed in Study 1 (16S rRNA metagenomics sequencing). Fermented milk products were associated with lower postprandial TMAO responses than non-fermented milks in urine (Study 1, p = 0.01; Study 2, p = 0.02) and in plasma, comparing yogurt and acidified milk (Study 1, p = 0.04). Daily consumption of dairy products did not differentially affect fasting TMAO metabolites. Significant correlations were observed between microbiota taxa and circulating or urinary TMAO concentrations. Fermentation of dairy products appear, at least transiently, to affect associations between dairy products and circulating TMAO levels

GC-MS Based Metabolomics and NMR Spectroscopy Investigation of Food Intake Biomarkers for Milk and Cheese in Serum of Healthy Humans.

The identification and validation of food intake biomarkers (FIBs) in human biofluids is a key objective for the evaluation of dietary intake. We report here the analysis of the GC-MS and 1H-NMR metabolomes of serum samples from a randomized cross-over study in 11 healthy volunteers having consumed isocaloric amounts of milk, cheese, and a soy drink as non-dairy alternative. Serum was collected at baseline, postprandially up to 6 h, and 24 h after consumption. A multivariate analysis of the untargeted serum metabolomes, combined with a targeted analysis of candidate FIBs previously reported in urine samples from the same study, identified galactitol, galactonate, and galactono-1,5-lactone (milk), 3-phenyllactic acid (cheese), and pinitol (soy drink) as candidate FIBs for these products. Serum metabolites not previously identified in the urine samples, e.g., 3-hydroxyisobutyrate after cheese intake, were detected. Finally, an analysis of the postprandial behavior of candidate FIBs, in particular the dairy fatty acids pentadecanoic acid and heptadecanoic acid, revealed specific kinetic patterns of relevance to their detection in future validation studies. Taken together, promising candidate FIBs for dairy intake appear to be lactose and metabolites thereof, for lactose-containing products, and microbial metabolites derived from amino acids, for fermented dairy products such as cheese

Caloric dose-responsive genes in blood cells differentiate the metabolic status of obese men.

We have investigated the postprandial transcriptional response of blood cells to increasing caloric doses of a meal challenge to test whether the dynamic response of the human organism to the ingestion of food is dependent on metabolic health. The randomized crossover study included seven normal weight and seven obese men consuming three doses (500/1000/1500 kcal) of a high-fat meal. The blood cell transcriptome was measured before and 2, 4, and 6 h after meal ingestion (168 samples). We applied univariate and multivariate statistics to investigate differentially expressed genes in both study groups. We identified 624 probe sets that were up- or down-regulated after the caloric challenge in a dose-dependent manner. These transcripts were most responsive to the 1500 kcal challenge in the obese group and were associated with postprandial insulin and oxidative phosphorylation. Furthermore, the data revealed a separation of the obese group into individuals whose response was close to the normal weight group and individuals with a transcriptional response indicative of a loss of metabolic flexibility. The molecular signature provided by the postprandial transcriptomic response of blood cells to increasing caloric doses of a high-fat meal challenge may represent a sensitive way to evaluate the qualitative impact of food on human health

Inflammatory and metabolic responses to high-fat meals with and without dairy products in men.

Postprandial inflammation is an important factor for human health since chronic low-grade inflammation is associated with chronic diseases. Dairy products have a weak but significant anti-inflammatory effect on postprandial inflammation. The objective of the present study was to compare the effect of a high-fat dairy meal (HFD meal), a high-fat non-dairy meal supplemented with milk (HFM meal) and a high-fat non-dairy control meal (HFC meal) on postprandial inflammatory and metabolic responses in healthy men. A cross-over study was conducted in nineteen male subjects. Blood samples were collected before and 1, 2, 4 and 6 h after consumption of the test meals. Plasma concentrations of insulin, glucose, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, TAG and C-reactive protein (CRP) were measured at each time point. IL-6, TNF-α and endotoxin concentrations were assessed at baseline and endpoint (6 h). Time-dependent curves of these metabolic parameters were plotted, and the net incremental AUC were found to be significantly higher for TAG and lower for CRP after consumption of the HFM meal compared with the HFD meal; however, the HFM and HFD meals were not different from the HFC meal. Alterations in IL-6, TNF-α and endotoxin concentrations were not significantly different between the test meals. The results suggest that full-fat milk and dairy products (cheese and butter) have no significant impact on the inflammatory response to a high-fat meal