Effectiveness of ceftazidime-avibactam versus ceftolozane-tazobactam for multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in the USA (CACTUS): a multicentre, retrospective, observational study.

Background: Ceftolozane-tazobactam and ceftazidime-avibactam are preferred treatment options for multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections; however, real-world comparative effectiveness studies are scarce. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic differences between the agents might affect clinical response rates. We aimed to compare the effectiveness of ceftolozane-tazobactam and ceftazidime-avibactam for treatment of invasive multidrug-resistant P aeruginosa infections.

Toxin inhibition: Examining tetracyclines, clindamycin, and linezolid.

Purpose: The purpose of this review is to discuss the role of toxin inhibition in select infections and to provide recommendations for appropriate antimicrobial selection when toxin inhibition is indicated.

Summary: For select organisms, specifically Clostridioides difficile, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pyogenes, toxin production plays an integral role in overall disease pathogenesis and progression. Some expert recommendations include utilization of an antimicrobial with toxin inhibition properties as primary or adjunctive therapy for certain infections due to these organisms, but evolving data have made the choice of antitoxin agent less clear.

Evaluation of Sequential Oral Versus Intravenous Antibiotic Treatment of Bloodstream Infections.

Background: Intravenous (IV) antibiotics have historically been considered standard of care for treatment of bloodstream infections (BSIs). Recent literature has shown sequential oral (PO) therapy to be noninferior to IV antibiotics for certain pathogens and disease states. However, a gap exists in the literature for BSI caused by .

A Baker's Dozen of Top Antimicrobial Stewardship Intervention Publications in 2022.

Keeping abreast of the antimicrobial stewardship-related articles published each year is challenging. The Southeastern Research Group Endeavor identified antimicrobial stewardship-related, peer-reviewed literature that detailed an actionable intervention during 2022. The top 13 publications were selected using a modified Delphi technique.

Nephrotoxic Risk Associated With Combination Therapy of Vancomycin and Piperacillin-Tazobactam in Critically Ill Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease.

The combination of vancomycin and piperacillin-tazobactam (VPT) has been associated with acute kidney injury (AKI) in hospitalized patients when compared to similar combinations. Additional studies examining this nephrotoxic risk in critically ill patients have not consistently demonstrated the aforementioned association. Furthermore, patients with baseline renal dysfunction have been excluded from almost all of these studies, creating a need to examine the risk in this patient population.

Long-term Dalbavancin for Suppression of Gram-Positive Chronic Left Ventricular Assist Device Infections.

Background: Infection is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with left ventricular assist devices (LVADs). Prolonged suppressive therapy should be strongly considered and is often used in patients with recurrent infections when source control cannot be achieved. Dalbavancin is a promising option in patients with LVADs requiring prolonged durations of antibiotic therapy, especially when no oral alternatives are available.

MAIRA: Protein-based Analysis of MinION Reads on a Laptop.

Third-generation sequencing technologies are being increasingly used in microbiome research and this has given rise to new challenges in computational microbiome analysis. Oxford Nanopore's MinION is a portable sequencer that streams data that can be basecalled on-the-fly. Here we give an introduction to the MAIRA software, which is designed to analyze MinION sequencing reads from a microbiome sample, as they are produced in real-time, on a laptop.

A Baker's Dozen of Top Antimicrobial Stewardship Intervention Publications in Non-Hospital Care Settings in 2021.

The scope of antimicrobial stewardship programs has expanded beyond the acute hospital setting. The need to optimize antimicrobial use in emergency departments, urgent, primary, and specialty care clinics, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities prompted the development of core elements of stewardship programs in these settings. Identifying the most innovative and well-designed stewardship literature in these novel stewardship areas can be challenging.

Reductions in inpatient fluoroquinolone use and postdischarge infection (CDI) from a systemwide antimicrobial stewardship intervention.

Objective: To determine the impact of an inpatient stewardship intervention targeting fluoroquinolone use on inpatient and postdischarge infection (CDI).

Design: We used an interrupted time series study design to evaluate the rate of hospital-onset CDI (HO-CDI), postdischarge CDI (PD-CDI) within 12 weeks, and inpatient fluoroquinolone use from 2 years prior to 1 year after a stewardship intervention.

Setting: An academic healthcare system with 4 hospitals.

Efficacy of Noncarbapenem β-Lactams Compared to Carbapenems for Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase-Producing Enterobacterales Urinary Tract Infections.

Background: Extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacterales are frequent causes of urinary tract infections (UTIs). Severe infections caused by ESBL Enterobacterales are often treated with carbapenems, but optimal treatment for less severe infections such as UTIs is unclear.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients admitted to 4 hospitals in an academic healthcare system with an ESBL UTI treated with either a noncarbapenem β-lactam (NCBL) or a carbapenem for at least 48 hours from 1 April 2014 to 30 April 2018.

Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry: An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package.

This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange-correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods.

A young adult with COVID-19 and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C)-like illness: a case report.

Background: A healthy 25-year-old woman developed COVID-19 disease with clinical characteristics resembling Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), a rare form of COVID-19 described primarily in children under 21 years of age.

Case Presentation: The patient presented with 1 week of weakness, dyspnea, and low-grade fevers, followed by mild cough, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, and lymph node swelling. She was otherwise healthy, with no prior medical history.

MAIRA- real-time taxonomic and functional analysis of long reads on a laptop.

Background: Advances in mobile sequencing devices and laptop performance make metagenomic sequencing and analysis in the field a technologically feasible prospect. However, metagenomic analysis pipelines are usually designed to run on servers and in the cloud.

Results: MAIRA is a new standalone program for interactive taxonomic and functional analysis of long read metagenomic sequencing data on a laptop, without requiring external resources.

Pursuing Experimental Reproducibility: An Efficient Protocol for the Preparation of Cerebrospinal Fluid Samples for NMR-based Metabolomics and Analysis of Sample Degradation.

NMR-based metabolomics investigations of human biofluids offer great potential to uncover new biomarkers. In contrast to protocols for sample collection and biobanking, procedures for sample preparation prior to NMR measurements are still heterogeneous, thus compromising the comparability of the resulting data. Herein, we present results of an investigation of the handling of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples for NMR metabolomics research.

The impact of an electronic medical record nudge on reducing testing for hospital-onset infection.

Objective: To determine the effect of an electronic medical record (EMR) nudge at reducing total and inappropriate orders testing for hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile infection (HO-CDI).

Design: An interrupted time series analysis of HO-CDI orders 2 years before and 2 years after the implementation of an EMR intervention designed to reduce inappropriate HO-CDI testing. Orders for C.

MEGAN-LR: new algorithms allow accurate binning and easy interactive exploration of metagenomic long reads and contigs.

Background: There are numerous computational tools for taxonomic or functional analysis of microbiome samples, optimized to run on hundreds of millions of short, high quality sequencing reads. Programs such as MEGAN allow the user to interactively navigate these large datasets. Long read sequencing technologies continue to improve and produce increasing numbers of longer reads (of varying lengths in the range of 10k-1M bps, say), but of low quality.

Impact of fluoroquinolone prophylaxis on infectious-related outcomes after hematopoietic cell transplantation.

Background: Patients immediately post-hematopoietic cell transplantation are at high risk for bacteremia. Judicious prophylactic antimicrobial utilization must balance anticipated benefits (reduction infections) versus risk (bacterial resistance, Clostridium difficile) .

Objective: To compare infectious outcomes (primary: incidence bacteremia; secondary: febrile neutropenia, C.

Influence of Hofmeister Ions on the Structure of Proline-Based Peptide Models: A Combined Experimental and Molecular Modeling Study.

The influence of three sodium salts, covering a wide range of the Hofmeister series, on the conformation of three proline-based peptide models in aqueous solution is examined using a combination of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. The anions preferentially interact with the cis conformers of the peptide models, which is rationalized by the respective electrostatic potential surfaces. These preferred interactions have a strong impact on the thermodynamics of the cis/trans equilibria, leading to a higher population of the cis conformers.

Computing all hybridization networks for multiple binary phylogenetic input trees.

Background: The computation of phylogenetic trees on the same set of species that are based on different orthologous genes can lead to incongruent trees. One possible explanation for this behavior are interspecific hybridization events recombining genes of different species. An important approach to analyze such events is the computation of hybridization networks.

A rapid analytical method for the quantification of paclitaxel in rat plasma and brain tissue by high-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry.

Rationale: Paclitaxel, an antitumor agent for the treatment of several types of cancers, has recently been reported to cause impaired cognitive function and neuropathic pain in humans. To assess the effects of paclitaxel on the central nervous system, a sensitive and accurate method is required to quantify paclitaxel concentrations in plasma and brain tissue obtained from rodents receiving paclitaxel.

Methods: The biological samples were prepared by liquid-liquid extraction and separated by a 3.

A first step toward computing all hybridization networks for two rooted binary phylogenetic trees.

Recently, considerable effort has been put into developing fast algorithms to reconstruct a rooted phylogenetic network that explains two rooted phylogenetic trees and has a minimum number of hybridization vertices. With the standard app1235roach to tackle this problem being combinatorial, the reconstructed network is rarely unique. From a biological point of view, it is therefore of importance to not only compute one network, but all possible networks.

Fast computation of minimum hybridization networks.

Motivation: Hybridization events in evolution may lead to incongruent gene trees. One approach to determining possible interspecific hybridization events is to compute a hybridization network that attempts to reconcile incongruent gene trees using a minimum number of hybridization events.

Results: We describe how to compute a representative set of minimum hybridization networks for two given bifurcating input trees, using a parallel algorithm and provide a user-friendly implementation.