Host Soluble Factors Cause Changes in Staphylococcus epidermidis Antibiotic Susceptibility and Biofilm Formation Ability.

Staphylococcus epidermidis is a major nosocomial pathogen with a remarkable ability to adhere to the surfaces of indwelling medical devices and form biofilms. Unlike other nosocomial pathogens, the interaction of S. epidermidis with host factors has not been the focus of substantial research. This study aimed to assess the alterations in the antibiotic susceptibility and biofilm formation ability of S. epidermidis in the presence of host serum factors. S. epidermidis strain RP62A was cultured in a laboratory culture medium with or without human serum/plasma, and changes in antibiotic susceptibility, biofilm formation, and gene expression were evaluated. The data obtained revealed that exposure to host serum factors increased the susceptibility of S. epidermidis to glycopeptide antibiotics and was also detrimental to biofilm formation. Gene expression analysis revealed downregulation of both dltA and fmtC genes shortly after human serum/plasma exposure. The importance of transferrin-mediated iron sequestration as a host anti-biofilm strategy against S. epidermidis was also emphasized. We have demonstrated that serum factors play a pivotal role as part of the host's anti-infective strategy against S. epidermidis infections, highlighting the importance of incorporating such factors during in vitro studies with this pathogen.

Rapidly involuting congenital hemangioma

Abstract: Rapidly involuting congenital hemangioma is a rare vascular tumor that generally has a good prognosis. The authors describe a case of a newborn girl with a left cervical vascular lesion. Image exams were performed, and the lesion slowly decreased, leaving redundant skin. Considering all of the findings, a final diagnosis of a rapidly involuting congenital hemangiomas was suspected.

Secondary Skin Plasmacytomas.

A 78-year old man was diagnosed in 2006 with IgAκ multiple myeloma (MM) (stage III-A). The patient was referred to our dermatology department in 2012 for evaluation of erythematous skin nodules on the anterior right aspect of the thorax; the skin lesions were noted during hospitalization for multiple bone fractures. He was on fourth-line chemotherapy (with vincristine/adriamycin/dexamethasone) because of constant disease progression. The patient was unaware of the skin lesions' evolution over time and did not recall when they had first appeared. He had no pain, itching, or spontaneous bleeding.

Rapidly involuting congenital hemangioma.

Rapidly involuting congenital hemangioma is a rare vascular tumor that generally has a good prognosis. The authors describe a case of a newborn girl with a left cervical vascular lesion. Image exams were performed, and the lesion slowly decreased, leaving redundant skin. Considering all of the findings, a final diagnosis of a rapidly involuting congenital hemangiomas was suspected.

Treatment of Akata EBV-positive cells with doxorubicin causes more EBV reactivation than treatment with etoposide.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: EBV has been associated with Burkitt lymphoma (BL). It establishes a latent infection but its reactivation has been observed in patients receiving long-term chemotherapy. The effect of doxorubicin on virus reactivation has been described previously, but the effect of etoposide or cytarabine on EBV reactivation has not been reported in the literature. The aim of this work was to carry out such a study. METHODS: Akata EBV-positive cell lines were treated with etoposide, doxorubicin or cytarabine. Viable cells were analyzed by trypan blue, programmed cell death by TUNEL assay, mRNA levels by RT-PCR and cellular or viral proteins by Western blot. Viruses were visualized by electron microscopy. RESULTS: All of the studied drugs caused cell death by apoptosis. Comparing the effect of etoposide and doxorubicin (at their IC(50)) in the EBV-positive cells, etoposide caused less EBV reactivation than doxorubicin. Cytarabine apparently did not reactivate EBV. CONCLUSION: When treating Akata EBV-positive cells with the respective IC(50) of the following drugs, etoposide induced less EBV reactivation than doxorubicin, and cytarabine apparently did not induce EBV reactivation.

EMG contributes to improve Cerebral State Index modeling in dogs anesthesia.

Cerebral State Index (CSI) is a measure of depth of anesthesia (DoA) developed for humans, which is traditionally modeled with the Hill equation and the propofol effect-site concentration (Ce). The CSI has been studied in dogs and showed several limitations related to the interpretation of EEG data. Nevertheless, the CSI has a lot of potential for DoA monitoring in dogs, it just needs to be adjusted for this species. In this work, an adapted CSI model is presented for dogs considering a) both Ce and EMG as inputs and b) a fuzzy logic structure with parameters optimized using the ANFIS method. The new model is compared with traditional Hill model using data from dogs in routine surgery. The results showed no significant impact in the model performance with the change of model structure (Fuzzy instead of Hill). The residuals of the Hill model were significantly correlated with the EMG, indicating that the latter should be considered in the model. In fact, the EMG introduction in CSI model significantly decreased the modeling error: 11.8 [8.6; 15.2] (fuzzy logic) versus 20.9 [16.4; 29.0] (Hill). This work shows that CSI modeling in dogs can be improved using the current human anesthesia set-up, once the EMG signal is acquired simultaneously with the CSI index. However, it does not invalidate the search of new DoA indices more adjusted to use in dog's anesthesia.

Modeling anesthetic drugs' pharmacodynamic interaction on the bispectral index of the EEG: the influence of heart rate.

The effect of drugs' interaction on the brain signal Bispectral Index (BIS) is of great importance for an anesthesia control drug infusion system. In this study, the objective was to inspect the influence of patient's heart rate on the effect of the drugs on BIS. With this goal, the patient's heart rate was incorporated in an drug interaction model. The model was fitted per patient during anesthesia induction, and tested for prediction under surgery. The results showed that the model with time changing parameters incorporating patient's heart rate has a better performance than a non adjusted model. Three clusters of models were also identified using the fuzzy c-means algorithm. These clusters will help to distinguish between different patients' dynamics.