[Invasive listeriosis in Valencian community, Spain, during the period 2008-2010]. / Incidencia de listeriosis invasiva en la Comunidad Valenciana durante el período 2008-2010.

BACKGROUND: Listeria monocytogenes is an uncommon cause of disease, although in certain age groups (infants, elderly, pregnant women and immunocompromised) may be an important cause of meningoencephalitis, and bacteremia. The aim of this study was to detect the incidence of invasive listeriosis cases found in Valencia during a period of 3 years. METHODS: A retrospective study of invasive listeriosis detected in the period 2008-2010 was carried out. The isolation of Listeria from a potentially sterile anatomical location was considered as "case". Data from the Microbiology Surveillance Network of Valencia (RedMIVA) were used as a source of information. RESULTS: 98 cases of invasive listeriosis were detected, of which 58% were men. The largest number of diagnosed cases belonged to the age range 60-80 years (63%). Bacteremic infectious become evident in 57 cases (58%), central nervous system lesions were located in 30 cases (31%) and infectious in sterile liquids occurred in the remaining cases (11%). In 90 strains (92% of cases) could be performed the sensitivity to antibiotics and all were sensitive to ampicillin. Incidence rates were: 0,73 cases/100.000 inhabitants in 2008, 0,70 cases/100.000 inhabitants in 2009 and 0,58 cases/100.000 inhabitants 2010. CONCLUSIONS: The average rate of invasive listeriosis in Valencian Community in the period 2008 to 2010 was 0.67 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Temporal or geographic clusters of cases were not detected.

High prevalence of subtype 4 among isolates of Blastocystis hominis from symptomatic patients of a health district of Valencia (Spain).

In order to know the genetic diversity of Blastocystis hominis from a health district of Valencia (Spain) 51 clinical isolates from symptomatic patients, 31 axenic and 20 monoxenic, were ribotyped by analysing the restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of amplicons obtained by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of small-subunit of ribosomal DNA genes (SSU-rDNA). For this purpose, DNA was subjected to two independent PCR (RD3-RD5, F1-R1) and to three independent treatments with restrictases (AluI, HinfI and RsaI). The digested DNA was separated electrophoretically, the isolates were clustered into ribotypes (ribodemes, RD3-RD5; subgroups, F1-R1) according to their profiles and the results were translated into genetic subtypes (ST) proposed by a consensus terminology. The results show that the isolates studied are an heterogeneous population and that both PCR-RFLP SSU-rDNA protocols have a similar discriminative power, since it allowed the ribotyping of all isolates and their clustering into four demes: ribodemes 1, 3 and 3-r and 6, which include isolates belonging to subgroup III, IV, V and V-r, respectively; which were assigned to ST1 (2%), ST2 (3.9%) and ST4 (94.1%). The most common of which is a zoonotic subtype (Blastocystis ratti) which includes, according to recent studies, non-pathogenic and pathogenic variants.