Rates of employment after liver transplant: A nationwide cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Employment outcomes after liver transplant (LT) over the past decade have not been described. METHODS: LT recipients ages 18-65 from 2010-2018 were identified in Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network data. Employment within two years post-transplant was assessed. RESULTS: Of 35,340 LT recipients, 34.2% were employed post-LT, including 70.4% who were working pre-transplant, compared to only 18.2% not working preLT. Younger age, male sex, educational attainment, and functional status were associated with returning to employment. CONCLUSION: Returning to employment is an important goal for many LT candidates and recipients, and these findings can be used to guide their expectations.

Alterations in DNA methylation associate with fatty liver and metabolic abnormalities in a multi-ethnic cohort of pre-teenage children.

Non-Alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the leading cause of chronic liver disease in children. Epigenetic alterations, such as through DNA methylation (DNAm), may link adverse childhood exposures and fatty liver and provide non-invasive methods for identifying children at high risk for NAFLD and associated metabolic dysfunction. We investigated the association between differential DNAm and liver fat content (LFC) and liver injury in pre-adolescent children. Leveraging data from the Newborn Epigenetics Study (NEST), we enrolled 90    mother-child dyads and used linear regression to identify CpG sites and differentially methylated regions (DMRs) in peripheral blood associated with LFC and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels in 7-12yo children. DNAm was measured using Infinium HumanMethylationEPIC BeadChips (Illumina). LFC and fibrosis were quantified by magnetic resonance imaging proton density fat fraction and elastography. Median LFC was 1.4% (range, 0.3-13.4%) and MRE was 2.5 kPa (range, 1.5-3.6kPa). Three children had LFC ≥ 5%, while six (7.6%) met our definition of NAFLD (LFC ≥ 3.7%). All children with NAFLD were obese and five were Black. LFC was associated with 88 DMRs and 106 CpGs (FDR<5%). The top two CpGs, cg25474373 and cg07264203, mapped to or near RFTN2 and PRICKLE2 genes. These two CpG sites were also significantly associated with a NAFLD diagnosis. As higher LFC associates with an adverse cardiometabolic profile already in childhood, altered DNAm may identify these children early in disease course for targeted intervention. Larger, longitudinal studies are needed to validate these findings and determine mechanistic relevance.

Staphylococcus pettenkoferi Bacteremia in an American Intensive Care Unit.

Coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) are considered the most common cause of nosocomial bloodstream infections; yet, these species are frequently designated as contaminants in the absence of systemic signs and symptoms of infection. Immunocompromised patients or those with prosthetic devices are at increased risk for clinically significant bacteremia. With the advent of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) in clinical practice, there has been improved specificity of CoNS isolate identification and further elucidation of underrecognized pathogenic species. Staphylococcus pettenkoferi was a novel CoNS species first identified in 2002 and thought to be misdiagnosed as other CoNS due to limitations in biochemical identification. There is increasing identification of S. pettenkoferi isolates; however, there are limited case reports of clinically significant S. pettenkoferi bacteremia and no reported cases within the United States. We present the first known case of S. pettenkoferi from an American intensive care unit.