Laboratory Review of Foodborne Disease Investigations in Washington State 2007-2017.

The Washington State Department of Health Public Health Laboratories (WAPHL) has tested 11,501 samples between 2007 and 2017 for a foodborne disease using a combination of identification, serotyping, and subtyping tools. During this period there were 8037 total clinical and environmental samples tested by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), including 512 foodborne disease clusters and 2176 PFGE patterns of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica. There were 2446 Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli samples tested by PFGE, which included 158 foodborne disease clusters and 1174 PFGE patterns. There were 332 samples of Listeria monocytogenes tested by PFGE, including 35 foodborne disease clusters and 104 PFGE patterns. Sources linked to outbreaks included raw chicken, unpasteurized dairy products, various produce types, and undercooked beef among others. As next-generation sequencing (NGS) replaces PFGE, the impact of this transition is expected to be significant given the enhanced cluster detection power NGS brings. The measures presented here will be a reference baseline in future years.

Acute effect of vasectomy on the function of the rat epididymal epithelium and vas deferens.

Persistent infertility after apparently successful vasectomy reversal is common. One possible etiology is epididymal epithelial dysfunction resulting in improper sperm maturation after vasectomy reversal. The epididymal epithelium secretes a number of proteins that are thought to be required for the maturation of sperm. Ligation of the vas deferens during vasectomy may affect the synthesis of some of these proteins. In the present study, the function of the epididymal epithelium was assessed at early times after vasectomy (1, 4, and 7 days) by measuring the level of mRNA of 4 secreted proteins: Crisp-1, clusterin, osteopontin, and transferrin. In addition, the site of synthesis of these proteins was determined by immunocytochemistry. The results demonstrated that the expression of Crisp-1 and clusterin, representative epididymal secretory proteins, was largely unaffected by vasectomy. However, osteopontin mRNA increased in the vas deferens in response to vasectomy. Immunocytochemical localization of osteopontin suggested that both infiltrating immune cells and deferential luminal epithelium were responsible for this up-regulation. Transferrin expression was viewed as a marker for immune cells at the site of injury. However, both the caput epididymis and deferential epithelia were found to express transferrin, in addition to immune cells. In conclusion, there appear to be only minor changes in expression of genes encoding epididymal secretory proteins acutely after vasectomy, but, not surprisingly, there was evidence of an inflammatory response after vasectomy.

Prostatic glands and urothelial epithelium in a seminal vesicle cyst: report of a case and review of pathologic features and prostatic ectopy.

We report a case of a seminal vesicle cyst containing prostatic glands and urothelial epithelium in a patient with no other urogenital anomalies. The detection of prostatic tissue, which is of endodermal origin, in a seminal vesicle cyst, a mesonephric duct derivative, is unusual. We review the pathologic features of seminal vesicle cysts and discuss the histogenesis of prostatic and urothelial tissue.