Clinical Complications and Healthcare Resource Utilization Associated with Conventional Management of Sickle Cell Disease with Recurrent Vaso-occlusive Crises and Transfusion-Dependent β-Thalassemia in Germany.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe clinical complications and healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) among patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) with recurrent vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs) and patients with transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia (TDT) in Germany.

Methods: The Betriebskrankenkasse (BKKs) Database was used to identify patients with SCD or TDT. To be eligible for inclusion, patients with SCD were required to have ≥ 2 VOCs/year in any two consecutive years and ≥ 12 months of available data before and after the index date (second VOC in the second consecutive year).

Risk of invasion and disease transmission by the Australasian freshwater snail Orientogalba viridis (Lymnaeidae): a field and experimental study.

Background: Biological invasions pose risks to the normal functioning of ecosystems by altering the structure and composition of several communities. Molluscs stand out as an extensively studied group given their long history of introduction by either natural or anthropogenic dispersal events. An alien population of the lymnaeid species Orientogalba viridis was first sighted in 2009 in southern Spain.

Restoring susceptibility to β-lactam antibiotics in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Infections by Staphylococcus aureus have been treated historically with β-lactam antibiotics. However, these antibiotics have become obsolete in methicillin-resistant S. aureus by acquisition of the bla and mec operons.