Changing Epidemiology of Tinea Capitis in Athens, Greece: The Impact of Immigration and Review of Literature.

Mass population movements have altered the epidemiology of tinea capitis (TC) in countries receiving refugees. Periodic monitoring of the local pathogen profiles may serve as a basis for both the selection of appropriate empirical antifungal therapy and the implementation of preventive actions. Therefore, we investigated the impact of an unprecedented immigration wave occurring in Greece since 2015 on the epidemiological trends of TC.

Bacterial DNA is a prognostic factor for mortality in patients who recover from spontaneous bacterial peritonitis.

Background: Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) is associated with a high mortality. The aim was to investigate whether bacterial deoxyribonucleic acid (bactDNA) could offer an accurate identification of pathogens and to explore its prognostic role during and early after an SBP episode.

Methods: Consecutive patients with SBP (SBP-group) and patients with decompensated cirrhosis without SBP/bacterascites (control-group) were enrolled.

A bulletin from Greece: a health system under the pressure of the second COVID-19 wave.

In this article, we analyze the cascade of events since the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Greece, with emphasis on the crisis' management so as to preserve the functionality of the national health system, which remains vulnerable due to the financial recession of the previous decade and chronic shortcomings . We compare and contrast the situation during the first and second epidemic wave. Understanding what possibly went wrong and when, is crucial .

In the midst of the perfect storm: Swift public health actions needed in order to increase societal safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The phenomenal speed of COVID-19 has subjected the public health professionals worldwide to struggle to subdue the spread of the disease and its impact of the affected societies. The limited biomedical and epidemiological understanding of COVID-19 along with the lack of vaccines and therapeutics have led to the reception of draconian measures from the societal safety domain, limiting human interaction through social distancing. Grounded on the adopted approaches, interventions in sero-prevalence studies, mobilisation of the primary health care (PHC) sector, as well as target socially vulnerable groups should be taken into consideration by heath authorities.

Reemergence of West Nile Virus Infections in Southern Greece, 2017.

Greece experienced the largest European West Nile virus (WNV) outbreak in 2010 since the 1996 Romania epidemic. West Nile virus reemerged in southern Greece during 2017, after a 2-year hiatus of recorded human cases, and herein laboratory findings, clinical features, and geographic distribution of WNV cases are presented. Clinical specimens from patients with clinically suspected WNV infection were sent from local hospitals to the Microbiology Department of Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and were tested for the presence of specific anti-WNV antibodies and WNV RNA.

MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry technology for detecting biomarkers of antimicrobial resistance: current achievements and future perspectives.

The laboratory diagnosis of infections is based on pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility determination. The gold standard of cultivation, isolation and susceptibility testing is a time-consuming procedure and in some cases this can be threatening for patients' outcome. In the current review the applications of mass spectrometry in pathogen identification and especially in detecting biomarkers of antimicrobial resistance are analyzed.