Collage of microbes, bacteria, disease

Systems analysis unravels a common rural-urban gradient in immunological profile, function, and metabolic dependencies

Wed, 04/30/2025 - 06:00
Urbanization affects environmental exposures and lifestyle, shaping immune system variation and influencing disease susceptibility and vaccine responses. Here, we present systems analysis of immune profiles across the rural-urban gradient, comparing rural and urban Senegalese with urban Dutch individuals. By integrating single-cell phenotyping, metabolic profiling, and functional analysis, we reveal a trajectory of immune remodeling along the gradient. This includes enrichment of proinflammatory...

Identifying patients at high risk for antibiotic treatment following hospital admission: a predictive score to improve antimicrobial stewardship measures

Tue, 04/15/2025 - 06:00
CONCLUSION: The PILGRIM score effectively identifies newly hospitalized patients likely to receive antibiotics, demonstrating high specificity and PPV. Its application can improve future AMS programs and trial recruitment by facilitating targeted inclusion of patients, especially in the hematological and oncological setting. Further -external and prospective- validation is needed to broaden the model's applicability.

Comparison of ciprofloxacin and aminoglycoside susceptibility testing for ceftriaxone non-susceptible Enterobacterales by disk diffusion and VITEK 2 vs. broth microdilution using updated Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute breakpoints

Tue, 04/01/2025 - 06:00
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that both disk diffusion and to a greater extent the AST-N391 card for the VITEK 2 system will overcall non-susceptibility according to current CLSI breakpoints for ciprofloxacin. By contrast, the existing AST-N391 VITEK 2 card can likely be used to correctly infer susceptibility to gentamicin and tobramycin.

Landscape of guidance documents used at TropNet and GeoSentinel centres for the clinical management of schistosomiasis outside endemic areas: a systematic appraisal

Fri, 02/21/2025 - 06:00
CONCLUSIONS: Heterogeneity in clinical guidance was evident, although with noticeable overlap at least for chronic schistosomiasis. This confirms the need to formalise case definitions, which should be used to design trials to rigorously assess diagnostic tools and treatment schemes, and eventually come to harmonisation of clinical management guidance.

Oseltamivir Reduces 30-Day Mortality in Older Adults With Influenza: A Pooled Analysis From the 2012-2019 Serious Outcomes Surveillance Network of the Canadian Immunization Research Network

Wed, 02/19/2025 - 06:00
CONCLUSIONS: Oseltamivir significantly reduces mortality risk in older adults hospitalized with influenza, even when administered after 48 hours, independent of vaccination status. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT01517191.

Causal role of the gut microbiome in certain human diseases: a narrative review

Thu, 02/13/2025 - 06:00
Composed of an elaborate ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa residing in the human digestive tract, the gut microbiome influences metabolism, immune modulation, bile acid homeostasis and host defence. Through observational and preclinical data, the gut microbiome has been implicated in the pathogenesis of a spectrum of chronic diseases ranging from psychiatric to gastrointestinal in nature. Until recently, the lack of unequivocal evidence supporting a causal link between gut...

Wnt/β-catenin signalling underpins juvenile Fasciola hepatica growth and development

Fri, 02/07/2025 - 06:00
Infection by the liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, places a substantial burden on the global agri-food industry and poses a significant threat to human health in endemic regions. Widespread resistance to a limited arsenal of chemotherapeutics, including the frontline flukicide triclabendazole (TCBZ), renders F. hepatica control unsustainable and accentuates the need for novel therapeutic target discovery. A key facet of F. hepatica biology is a population of specialised stem cells which drive...

Subtle genomic differences in <em>Klebsiella pneumoniae sensu stricto</em> isolates indicate host adaptation

Mon, 02/03/2025 - 06:00
Klebsiella pneumoniae sensu stricto (KpI) is an opportunistic pathogen capable of residing as a commensal in both human and bovine intestinal tracts and can cause serious systemic infections in humans and severe clinical mastitis in dairy cattle. It is unclear what role zoonotic and anthroponotic transmission play in the dissemination of KpI. In this study, we use a comparative genomic approach to identify differences between KpI associated with disease in humans and cattle and aimed to identify...

Imputation for Lipidomics and Metabolomics (ImpLiMet): a web-based application for optimization and method selection for missing data imputation

Mon, 01/27/2025 - 06:00
MOTIVATION: Missing values are prevalent in high-throughput measurements due to various experimental or analytical reasons. Imputation, the process of replacing missing values in a dataset with estimated values, plays an important role in multivariate and machine learning analyses. The three missingness patterns, including missing completely at random, missing at random, and missing not at random, describe unique dependencies between the missing and observed data. The optimal imputation method...

Usefulness of polymerase chain reaction tests in Chagas disease studies

Thu, 01/16/2025 - 06:00
The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a highly sensitive, specific, and rapid diagnostic tool for Chagas disease. Chagas disease is caused by the protozoan flagellate Trypanosoma cruzi and is endemic to the Americas. While conventional serological methods are still used in the diagnosis of Chagas disease, they are being gradually replaced by molecular methods like PCR. PCR can detect the parasite's DNA in blood or tissue samples from humans and animals, including asymptomatic infections...

Manipulation of mitochondrial poly(A) polymerase family proteins in <em>Trypanosoma brucei</em> impacts mRNA termini processing

Thu, 01/16/2025 - 06:00
RNA-specific nucleotidyltransferases (rNTrs) add nontemplated nucleotides to the 3^(') end of RNA. Two noncanonical rNTRs that are thought to be poly(A) polymerases (PAPs) have been identified in the mitochondria of trypanosomes - KPAP1 and KPAP2. KPAP1 is the primary polymerase that adds adenines (As) to trypanosome mitochondrial mRNA 3^(') tails, while KPAP2 is a non-essential putative polymerase whose role in the mitochondria is ambiguous. Here, we elucidate the effects of manipulations of...
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