Multisite Qualification of an Automated Incubator and Colony Counter for Environmental and Bioburden Applications in Pharmaceutical Microbiology.

Traditional microbiological techniques have been used for well over a century as the basis for contamination testing of pharmaceutical products and processes. With more recent focus on faster product release and concerns around the integrity of the test data, new technologies have been implemented to detect and enumerate organisms faster and provide paperless processes to minimize data integrity issues. Manual colony counting technologies, where incubation is performed in a standard incubator, and the plate is manually transferred to the colony counter for a single read at the end of incubation, have been used for many years to reduce the potential for human error; however, they pose validation challenges due to poor counting accuracy.

Limited Correlation of Shotgun Metagenomics Following Host Depletion and Routine Diagnostics for Viruses and Bacteria in Low Concentrated Surrogate and Clinical Samples.

The etiologic cause of encephalitis, meningitis or meningo-encephalitis is unknown in up to 70% of cases. Clinical shotgun metagenomics combined with host depletion is a promising technique to identify infectious etiologies of central nervous system (CNS) infections. We developed a straightforward eukaryotic host nucleic acid depletion method that preserves intact viruses and bacteria for subsequent shotgun metagenomics screening of clinical samples, focusing on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

Prevalence of tick-borne pathogens in questing Ixodes ricinus ticks in urban and suburban areas of Switzerland.

Background: Throughout Europe, Ixodes ricinus transmits numerous pathogens. Its widespread distribution is not limited to rural but also includes urbanized areas. To date, comprehensive data on pathogen carrier rates of I.