Home nursing and self-administered outpatient parenteral antimicrobial treatment: a comparison of demographics and outcomes from a large regional hospital in Queensland, Australia.

Background: Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial treatment (OPAT) is a safe and effective therapy used in several settings across Australia. As OPAT services expand their inclusion criteria to include complex patient populations, there is an increased need for selecting appropriate patients to receive either healthcare-administered OPAT (H-OPAT) or self-administered OPAT (S-OPAT).

Aims: To describe patient demographics, diagnosis, microbiology and outcomes of patients treated by H-OPAT and S-OPAT within the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service, Australia.

Barriers-enablers-ownership approach: a mixed methods analysis of a social intervention to improve surgical antibiotic prescribing in hospitals.

Objectives: To assess an intervention for surgical antibiotic prophylaxis (SAP) improvement within surgical teams focused on addressing barriers and fostering enablers and ownership of guideline compliance.

Design: The Queensland Surgical Antibiotic Prophylaxis (QSAP) study was a multicentre, mixed methods study designed to address barriers and enablers to SAP compliance and facilitate engagement in self-directed audit/feedback and assess the efficacy of the intervention in improving compliance with SAP guidelines. The implementation was assessed using a 24-month interrupted time series design coupled with a qualitative evaluation.

The influence of wearing ski-boots with different rigidity characteristics on postural control.

External supports that reduce ankle joint mobility such as ski-boots can impair postural control of healthy participants. Although this disruptive effect has been attributed to the rigidity of the external supports, the results remained controversial and no study has been conducted in order to evaluate the influence of ski-boots rigidity. Hence, the question about the influence of ankle support rigidity on postural control remains open.

Involvement of primary mesenchymal precursors and hematopoietic bone marrow cells from chronic myeloid leukemia patients by BCR-ABL1 fusion gene.

For decades now, it is well established that chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a hematopoietic stem cell(HPC) disorder. However, it remains to be determined whether BCR-ABL1 gene rearrangement occurs in a HPC or at an earlier stem cell and whether the degree of involvement of hematopoiesis by the BCR-ABL1 fusion gene relates to the response to therapy. Here, we have investigated by interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (iFISH) the distribution of BCR-ABL1 fusion gene in FACS-sorted bone marrow (BM) populations of mesenchymal precursor cells (MPC) and other hematopoietic cell populations from 18 newly diagnosed CML patients.

Infection with Hymenolepis diminuta is more effective than daily corticosteroids in blocking chemically induced colitis in mice.

Purpose: To compare infection with the tapeworm, Hymenolepis diminuta, with steroid (dexamethasone) administration in the inhibition of dinitrobenzene sulfonic acid- (DNBS-) induced colitis in mice.

Procedures: Mice were treated with DNBS +/- infected with H. diminuta or treated with daily dexamethasone (2 mg/Kg, ip.