Application of Phage Therapy in a Case of a Chronic Hip-Prosthetic Joint Infection due to Pseudomonas aeruginosa: An Italian Real-Life Experience and In Vitro Analysis.

Background: Prosthetic joint infection (PJI) caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa represents a severe complication in orthopedic surgery. We report the case of a patient with chronic PJI from P. aeruginosa successfully treated with personalized phage therapy (PT) in combination with meropenem. Methods: A 62-year-old woman was affected by a chronic right hip prosthesis infection caused by P. aeruginosa since 2016 . The patient was treated with phage Pa53 (I day 10 mL q8h, then 5 mL q8h via joint drainage for 2 weeks) in association with meropenem (2gr q12h iv) after a surgical procedure. A 2-year clinical follow up was performed. An in vitro bactericidal assay of the phage alone and in combination with meropenem against a 24-hour-old biofilm of bacterial isolate was also carried out. Results: No severe adverse events were observed during PT. Two years after suspension, there were no clinical signs of infection relapse, and a marked leukocyte scan showed no pathological uptake areas. In vitro studies showed that the minimum biofilm eradicating concentration of meropenem was 8 µg/mL. No biofilm eradication was observed at 24 hours incubation with phages alone (108 plaque-forming units [PFU]/mL). However, the addition of meropenem at suberadicating concentration (1 µg/mL) to phages at lower titer (103 PFU/mL) resulted in a synergistic eradication after 24 hours of incubation. Conclusions: Personalized PT, in combination with meropenem, was found to be safe and effective in eradicating P. aeruginosa infection. These data encourage the development of personalized clinical studies aimed at evaluating the efficacy of PT as an adjunct to antibiotic therapy for chronic persistent infections.

Loose and Tight GNSS/INS Integrations: Comparison of Performance Assessed in Real Urban Scenarios.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) remain the principal mean of positioning in many applications and systems, but in several types of environment, the performance of standalone receivers is degraded. Although many works show the benefits of the integration between GNSS and Inertial Navigation Systems (INSs), tightly-coupled architectures are mainly implemented in professional devices and are based on high-grade Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). This paper investigates the performance improvements enabled by the tight integration, using low-cost sensors and a mass-market GNSS receiver. Performance is assessed through a series of tests carried out in real urban scenarios and is compared against commercial modules, operating in standalone mode or featuring loosely-coupled integrations. The paper describes the developed tight-integration algorithms with a terse mathematical model and assesses their efficacy from a practical perspective.

Prototyping a GNSS-Based Passive Radar for UAVs: An Instrument to Classify the Water Content Feature of Lands.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) broadcast signals for positioning and navigation, which can be also employed for remote sensing applications. Indeed, the satellites of any GNSS can be seen as synchronized sources of electromagnetic radiation, and specific processing of the signals reflected back from the ground can be used to estimate the geophysical properties of the Earth's surface. Several experiments have successfully demonstrated GNSS-reflectometry (GNSS-R), whereas new applications are continuously emerging and are presently under development, either from static or dynamic platforms. GNSS-R can be implemented at a low cost, primarily if small devices are mounted on-board unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which today can be equipped with several types of sensors for environmental monitoring. So far, many instruments for GNSS-R have followed the GNSS bistatic radar architecture and consisted of custom GNSS receivers, often requiring a personal computer and bulky systems to store large amounts of data. This paper presents the development of a GNSS-based sensor for UAVs and small manned aircraft, used to classify lands according to their soil water content. The paper provides details on the design of the major hardware and software components, as well as the description of the results obtained through field tests.

Perianal condyloma-like lesions in multiple myeloma associated amyloidosis.

Systemic types of amyloidosis include those associated with plasma cell dyscrasia, as in multiple myeloma. Here we describe a 57-year-old woman who was diagnosed as having multiple myeloma IgG lambda. Six months after the diagnosis of myeloma, mucocutaneous lesions began to develop, with ecchymoses in the body folds and eyelid and periorbital purpura. Pedunculated condylomatous tumours began to develop in the perianal area. The excisional biopsy of a perianal nodule revealed a faintly eosinophilic, amorphous material replacing almost the entire dermis, in association with ectatic, endothelial-lined vascular spaces. The dermal deposits showed affinity with Congo Red stain. There were no histopathological features typical of condylomata acuminata. A diagnosis of cutaneous myeloma-associated amyloidosis was established. To our knowledge, this is the second reported case of condyloma-like perianal lesions in multiple myeloma-associated amyloidosis.