Publications by authors named "A Morimura"
Article Synopsis
- Methods for identifying bacterial pathogens can be divided into three main categories: conventional culture-based techniques, nucleic acid tests, and mass spectrometry.
- While conventional methods take several days and require expert technicians and expensive equipment, nucleic acid tests and mass spectrometry are faster and more accurate.
- A new, cost-effective method combining micropore technology and machine learning was developed, achieving high accuracy (ROC curve of 0.94) in distinguishing between similar bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis, making it accessible for use in remote and developing areas.
Article Synopsis
- High-throughput detection methods for viruses can help control disease outbreaks, with RT-PCR being the standard for diagnosing SARS-CoV-2, though it requires RNA extraction for accurate results.
- A new method using nanopores and artificial intelligence enables high-sensitivity detection of novel coronaviruses without needing RNA extraction, streamlining the process.
- The developed platform, termed artificially intelligent nanopore, can accurately identify multiple coronaviruses with a sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 96%, providing results from saliva samples in just 5 minutes.
(also called pneumococcus) is not only a commensal that frequently colonizes the human upper respiratory tract but also a pathogen that causes pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis. The mechanism of pneumococcal infection has been extensively studied, but the process of transmission has not been fully elucidated because of the lack of tractable animal models. Novel animal models of transmission have enabled further progress in investigating pneumococcal transmission mechanisms including the processes such as pneumococcal shedding, survival in the external environment, and adherence to the nasopharynx of a new host.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The detection of infectious bacteria in blood culture samples is important for diagnosis and treatment, but this requires 1-2 days at least, and is not adequate as a rapid test. Therefore, we have investigated the diagnostic ability and the optimal cutoff value of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) for predicting the bacteremias using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and relative cumulative frequency distribution (RCD) curves.
Methods: A case-control study was performed in inpatients (852 subjects: 426 positive cultures and 426 negative cultures) from January 1 to December 31, 2014.
To assess relationships of inflammatory markers and 2 related clinical factors with blood culture results, we retrospectively investigated inpatients' blood culture and blood chemistry findings that were recorded from January to December 2014 using electronic medical records and analyzed the data of 852 subjects (426 culture-positive and 426 culture-negative). Results suggested that the risk of positive blood culture statistically increased as inflammatory marker levels and the number of related factors increased. Concerning the effectiveness of inflammatory markers, when the outcome definition was also changed for C-reactive protein (CRP), the odds ratio had a similar value, whereas when the outcome definition of blood culture positivity was used for procalcitonin (PCT), the greatest effectiveness of that was detected.
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