Impact of Day 1 carotid patency on outcome in dissection-related tandem occlusions treated with mechanical thrombectomy.

BACKGROUND: The clinical benefit of mechanical thrombectomy(MT) for stroke patients with tandem occlusion is similar to that of isolated intracranial occlusions. However, the management of cervical internal carotid artery(ICA) occlusion during the MT, particularly in the setting of carotid dissection, remains controversial. We aimed to investigate the clinical impact of cervical ICA patency at day 1 on 3-month functional outcome. METHODS: We collected data from the Endovascular Treatment in Ischemic Stroke, a prospective national registry in 30 French centers performing MT between January 2015 and January 2022. Inclusion criteria were consecutive tandem occlusions related to cervical ICA dissection treated with MT. Tandem occlusions of other etiology, isolated cervical ICA occlusions without intracranial thrombus and patients without day-1 ICA imaging were excluded. Primary endpoint was the 3-month functional outcome. Secondary endpoints included intracranial hemorrhage(ICH), excellent outcome, mortality and early neurological improvement. A sensitivity analysis was performed in patients with intracranial favorable recanalization after MT. RESULTS: During the study period, 137 patients were included of which 89(65%) presented ICA patency at day 1. The odds of favorable outcome did not significantly differ between patients with patent and occluded ICA at day 1(68.7 vs 59.1%;aOR=1.30;95%CI 0.56-3.00,p=0.54). Excellent outcome, early neurological improvement, mortality and ICH were also comparable between groups. Sensitivity analysis showed similar results. CONCLUSION: ICA patency at day 1 in patients with tandem occlusions related to dissection did not seem to influence functional outcome. Endovascular recanalization of the cervical ICA including stenting might not be systematically required in this setting.

Identification of Food Spoilage Fungi Using MALDI-TOF MS: Spectral Database Development and Application to Species Complex.

Fungi, including filamentous fungi and yeasts, are major contributors to global food losses and waste due to their ability to colonize a very large diversity of food raw materials and processed foods throughout the food chain. In addition, numerous fungal species are mycotoxin producers and can also be responsible for opportunistic infections. In recent years, MALDI-TOF MS has emerged as a valuable, rapid and reliable asset for fungal identification in order to ensure food safety and quality. In this context, this study aimed at expanding the VITEK® MS database with food-relevant fungal species and evaluate its performance, with a specific emphasis on species differentiation within species complexes. To this end, a total of 380 yeast and mold strains belonging to 51 genera and 133 species were added into the spectral database including species from five species complexes corresponding to Colletotrichum acutatum, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Fusarium dimerum, Mucor circinelloides complexes and Aspergillus series nigri. Database performances were evaluated by cross-validation and external validation using 78 fungal isolates with 96.55% and 90.48% correct identification, respectively. This study also showed the capacity of MALDI-TOF MS to differentiate closely related species within species complexes and further demonstrated the potential of this technique for the routine identification of fungi in an industrial context.

Bootstrapping time correlation functions of molecular dynamics.

Molecular dynamics is often considered as a numerical experiment. The error bars on the results are therefore mandatory, but sometimes difficult to determine and computationally demanding. As a low-cost approach, we describe the application of the bootstrap (BS) method to the quantification of uncertainties pertaining to the time correlation functions. We chose the autocorrelation functions of velocity and interdiffusion current for a binary ionic mixture as a test bed, and we assessed the merit of the Darken approximation relating both of them. The intrinsic errors related to phase space sampling is investigated comparing the BS method with the reference method of replica. We also study how the BS method can assist in addressing the finite-size effects.

Automated antimicrobial susceptibility testing of slow-growing Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains in the presence of tetrazolium salt WST-1.

Slow growing, mucoid isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa require adaptation of the protocol used for automated antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). In the present study we used a water soluble tetrazolium salt WST-1 (4-[3-(4-iodophenyl)-2-(4-nitrophenyl)-2H-5-tetrazolio]-1,3-benzene disulfonate) in combination with menadione for possibly improving AST of slow growing and biofilm-forming P. aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. WST-1 and menadione addition ensures sensitive detection of microbial growth increase in the presence of antibiotics that may remain undetected with the automated VITEK® 2 method. We observed that 32.8% of P. aeruginosa isolates from CF and bronchiectasis patients produced an elevated absorbance signal intensity thereby increasing the sensitivity while maintaining the accuracy of VITEK 2. Our study merits future investigation with other slow growing pathogenic bacterial species.

Satellite image restoration in the context of a spatially varying point spread function.

In this paper, we consider a deconvolution problem where the point spread function (PSF) of the optical imaging system varies between different spatial locations, thus leading to a spatially varying blur. This problem arises, for example, in synthetic aperture instruments and in wide-field optical systems. Unlike the classical deconvolution context where the PSF is assumed to be spatially invariant, the problem cannot be easily solved in the Fourier domain. We propose here an iterative algorithm based on convex optimization techniques and a wavelet frame regularization. This approach allows restoration of the image, taking into account the properties of the blur operator, the latter being known.