Clinical and Demographic Characteristics of Patients Hospitalized for Decompensated Heart Failure with Extremely High NT-proBNP Levels.

Background: NT-proBNP levels with a wide range at admission play both a diagnostic and a prognostic role in patients with HF. The differences regarding the clinical profiles and demography in decompensated HF patients according to NT-proBNP levels at admission are not clear.

Methods: This study aimed to analyze and compare clinical profiles and demographics in patients hospitalized for decompensated heart failure according to levels of NT-proBNP at admission.

The impact of chlorine and heat on the infectivity and physicochemical properties of bacteriophage MS2.

Enteric viruses and bacteriophages are exposed to various inactivating factors outside their host, and among them chlorine and heat are the most commonly used sanitizer in water industry and treatment in the food industry, respectively. Using MS2 phages as models for enteric viruses, we investigated the impact of free chlorine and heat on their physicochemical properties. Free chlorine was first evaluated alone.

Inactivation of murine norovirus and hepatitis A virus on fresh raspberries by gaseous ozone treatment.

Raspberries are vulnerable products for which industrial treatment solutions ensuring both food safety and sensory quality are not easily applicable. Raspberries have been associated with numerous foodborne outbreaks in recent decades. Ozone has been proven effective as a drinking water treatment against pathogenic microorganisms.

MS2 and Qβ bacteriophages reveal the contribution of surface hydrophobicity on the mobility of non-enveloped icosahedral viruses in SDS-based capillary zone electrophoresis.

SDS is commonly employed as BGE additive in CZE analysis of non-enveloped icosahedral viruses. But the way by which SDS interacts with the surface of such viruses remains to date poorly known, making complicate to understand their behavior during a run. In this article, two related bacteriophages, MS2 and Qβ, are used as model to investigate the migration mechanism of non-enveloped icosahedral viruses in SDS-based CZE.