Publications by authors named "A Blomfeldt"
Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 has greatly mitigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, concerns have been raised about the degree to which vaccination might drive the emergence and selection of immune escape mutations that will hamper the efficacy of the vaccines. In this study, we investigate whether vaccination impacted the micro-scale adaptive evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the Oslo region of Norway, during the first nine months of 2021, a period in which the population went from near-zero to almost 90 per cent vaccine coverage in the population over 50 years old.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Two Weeks in the World research project has resulted in a dataset of 3087 clinically relevant bacterial genomes with pertaining metadata, collected from 59 diagnostic units in 35 countries around the world during 2020. A relational database is available with metadata and summary data from selected bioinformatic analysis, such as species prediction and identification of acquired resistance genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Severe COVID-19 is linked to a harmful inflammatory response, which the study aimed to better understand by analyzing gene expression patterns in patients.
- Researchers studied blood samples from 17 severe COVID-19 patients, 15 with moderate symptoms, and 11 healthy controls, all of whom were unvaccinated.
- Findings indicated heightened activation of immune components like neutrophils and cytokines in severe cases, with a noted shift towards a less mature neutrophil phenotype over time, while interferon signaling was more active early on but did not correlate with severe disease progression.
Background: A novel Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL)-positive meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clonal complex (CC)5-MRSA-IVc ('Sri Lankan' clone) was recently described from Sri Lanka. Similar isolates caused a recent Irish hospital outbreak.
Aim: To investigate the international dissemination and diversity of PVL-positive CC5-MRSA-IVc isolates from hospital and community settings using whole-genome sequencing (WGS).