A retrospective observational study on enterococcal bacteraemia and endocarditis at a regional hospital in New South Wales, Australia.

BACKGROUND: Enterococcal infection poses a major clinical problem due to increasing antibiotic resistance and rising numbers of health care related infections. It is also associated with high morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study is to examine demographic characteristics, co-morbidities and clinical outcomes of the patients as well as susceptibility spectrum of all Enterococcal bacteraemia and endocarditis. METHODS: A retrospective observational study was performed on cases of Enterococcal bacteraemia and endocarditis at Port Macquarie Base Hospital, New South Wales, Australia from 1st January 2012 till 31st December 2018. RESULTS: Out of 75 patients with Enterococcal bacteraemia, about 70% were male. E.faecalis was responsible for about two-thirds of bacteraemia. E.faecalis most commonly presented as infective endocarditis whereas intraabdominal infection was the most common presentation for E.faecium. 90-day all-cause mortality for all Enterococcal bacteraemia was 29.3% (22 out of 75) with a higher mortality rate with E.faecium bacteraemia in comparison to E.faecalis bacteraemia (47.8% Vs 20.8%). Vancomycin resistance was noted only in 17.4% of E.faecium species. There were 18 patients with infective endocarditis over 7 years period with a yearly prevalence rate of 2.6%. Readmission was 78% and mortality was 16.7% within 90 days of admission. Regarding the use of echocardiogram, about 41.3% of Enterococcal bacteraemia did not have echocardiograms. CONCLUSION: Enterococcal bacteraemia was associated with high morbidity and mortality, particularly secondary to E.faecium bacteraemia. Enterococcal IE was associated with high rates of complications, readmissions, and prolonged inpatient stay.

Comparative analysis of low complexity regions in Plasmodia.

Low complexity regions (LCRs) are a common feature shared by many genomes, but their evolutionary and functional significance remains mostly unknown. At the core of the uncertainty is a poor understanding of the mechanisms that regulate their retention in genomes, whether driven by natural selection or neutral evolution. Applying a comparative approach of LCRs to multiple strains and species is a powerful approach to identify patterns of conservation in these regions. Using this method, we investigate the evolutionary history of LCRs in the genus Plasmodium based on orthologous protein coding genes shared by 11 species and strains from primate and rodent-infecting pathogens. We find multiple lines of evidence in support of natural selection as a major evolutionary force shaping the composition and conservation of LCRs through time and signatures that their evolutionary paths are species specific. Our findings add a comparative analysis perspective to the debate on the evolution of LCRs and harness the power of sequence comparisons to identify potential functionally important LCR candidates.

Plasmons in the metallic nanoparticle-film system as a tunable impurity problem.

We show that the plasmon resonances of a metallic nanoparticle interacting with the surface plasmons of a metallic film is an electromagnetic analogue of the spinless Anderson-Fano model. This is the same model used to describe the interaction of a localized electronic state with a continuous band of electronic states. The three characteristic regimes of this model are realized here, where the energy of the nanoparticle plasmon resonance lies above, within, or below the energy band of surface plasmon states. These three interaction regimes are controlled by film thickness. The latter regime is experimentally observed and identified.