Trichophyton species and Microsporum gypseum infection and fomite carriage in cats from three animal shelters: a retrospective case series.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this retrospective case series was to report on the clinical aspects of confirmed Trichophyton species and Microsporum gypseum infections in cats from three animal shelters. METHODS: This was an observational retrospective study. Fungal culture and treatment data from three animal shelters was retrospectively reviewed to identify cats with dermatophytosis caused by Trichophyton species or M gypseum. RESULTS: Among the three shelters only four cats were diagnosed with M gypseum dermatophytosis. With respect to Trichophyton species infections, there were six cases identified and treated in a 1 year period in one shelter, 13 cases over 13 years in the second shelter and 27 cases over 5 years in the third shelter. Four cases of M gypseum dermatophytosis were treated in the third shelter. Young cats were most commonly infected and the disease was most commonly diagnosed in the fall and winter months. Lesions were inflammatory and found predominantly on the head and neck. There was a rapid response to treatment in all cases; mean (n = 20) and median (n = 17) days to mycological cure were calculated from available data. Fungal culture data revealed fomite carriage without clinical evidence of infection for Trichophyton species (n = 43) cats and M gypseum (n = 37) cats. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: There is a paucity of clinical information about non-Microsporum canis dermatophytosis in shelter cats. This study data shows that Trichophyton species and M gypseum infections do occur but are uncommon. Based upon the rapid response to conventional treatment, these infections do not represent a treatment challenge, as most cats reached mycological cure within 3 weeks.

A cancer cell-line titration series for evaluating somatic classification.

BACKGROUND: Accurate detection of somatic single nucleotide variants and small insertions and deletions from DNA sequencing experiments of tumour-normal pairs is a challenging task. Tumour samples are often contaminated with normal cells confounding the available evidence for the somatic variants. Furthermore, tumours are heterogeneous so sub-clonal variants are observed at reduced allele frequencies. We present here a cell-line titration series dataset that can be used to evaluate somatic variant calling pipelines with the goal of reliably calling true somatic mutations at low allele frequencies. RESULTS: Cell-line DNA was mixed with matched normal DNA at 8 different ratios to generate samples with known tumour cellularities, and exome sequenced on Illumina HiSeq to depths of >300×. The data was processed with several different variant calling pipelines and verification experiments were performed to assay >1500 somatic variant candidates using Ion Torrent PGM as an orthogonal technology. By examining the variants called at varying cellularities and depths of coverage, we show that the best performing pipelines are able to maintain a high level of precision at any cellularity. In addition, we estimate the number of true somatic variants undetected as cellularity and coverage decrease. CONCLUSIONS: Our cell-line titration series dataset, along with the associated verification results, was effective for this evaluation and will serve as a valuable dataset for future somatic calling algorithm development. The data is available for further analysis at the European Genome-phenome Archive under accession number EGAS00001001016. Data access requires registration through the International Cancer Genome Consortium's Data Access Compliance Office (ICGC DACO).

Hotspot activating PRKD1 somatic mutations in polymorphous low-grade adenocarcinomas of the salivary glands.

Polymorphous low-grade adenocarcinoma (PLGA) is the second most frequent type of malignant tumor of the minor salivary glands. We identified PRKD1 hotspot mutations encoding p.Glu710Asp in 72.9% of PLGAs but not in other salivary gland tumors. Functional studies demonstrated that this kinase-activating alteration likely constitutes a driver of PLGA.

Altruism in survivors of sexual violence: the typology of helping others.

BACKGROUND: Sexual violence is a significant and prevalent problem that affects many people in the United States. Helping others is one way people cope with, or heal from, sexual violence. OBJECTIVE: To develop of Typology of Helping Others describing how survivors of sexual violence engage in altruism. STUDY DESIGN: Qualitative descriptive methods were used to describe how survivors of sexual violence engaged in altruism in response to their experiences with violence. RESULTS: Helping others was a salient concern for most participants who experienced sexual violence. Participants indicated multiple and varied ways of helping others. Results also indicated that participants experienced some healing from their experiences before they were able to actively engage in, or be effective in, helping others. CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians working with survivors of sexual violence should be attuned to the different ways survivors engage in altruism and the potential influences of race and gender on helping others.

An evaluation of the risk assessment method used by Environmental Health Officers when inspecting food businesses.

Two outbreaks of infection with Salmonella enteritidis phage types 5c and 6a occurred in a number of Scottish health board areas between May 2000 and January 2001. A case-control study of food businesses was subsequently carried out to ascertain whether the scores derived from Environmental Health Officers' inspections prior to the outbreaks differed between food businesses where outbreak cases had eaten in the week before the onset of their illness (case food businesses) and neighbouring food businesses at which no outbreak case had eaten (control food businesses). The study showed no significant difference between the scores of case and control food businesses. The results suggest that the inspections were ineffective in identifying those food businesses that are more likely to cause incidents of food poisoning.