Structural Interventions in Heart Failure: Mending a Broken Heart.

Advanced heart failure is often accompanied by perturbations in cardiac chamber or valve geometries which result in worsening cardiac function and hemodynamics. Once limited to surgical procedures, recent developments in minimally invasive percutaneous techniques have demonstrated efficacy in patients with both reduced and preserved ejection fraction who are at an elevated surgical risk for perioperative events. This review highlights a subset of the interventions available in clinical practice or in development for the treatment of these valvular and structural alterations.

Serotonin syndrome following left ventricular assist device implantation: A report and institution-specific strategy for prevention.

Serotonin syndrome is a potentially lethal complication of antidepressant therapy. Cardiac surgical patients are at particularly high risk of serotonin syndrome due to the prevalence of depression in patients with advanced cardiac disease, many of whom receive multiple serotonergic agents in the perioperative period. Here, we describe a case of postoperative serotonin syndrome following methylene blue administration for perioperative vasoplegia during left ventricular assist device implantation.

"Quorum Non-Sensing": Social Cheating and Deception in Vibrio cholerae.

Quorum sensing (QS) is widely used by bacteria to coordinate behavior in response to external stimuli. In Vibrio cholerae, this process is important for environmental survival and pathogenesis, though, intriguingly, a large percentage of natural isolates are QS deficient. Here, we show that QS-deficient mutants can spread as social cheaters by ceasing production of extracellular proteases under conditions requiring their growth.

Clostridium difficile contains plasmalogen species of phospholipids and glycolipids.

Analysis of the polar lipids of many pathogenic and non-pathogenic clostridia has revealed the presence of plasmalogens, alk-1'-enyl ether-containing phospholipids and glycolipids. An exception to this finding so far has been Clostridium difficile, an important human pathogen which is the cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and other more serious complications. We have examined the polar lipids of three strains of C.

A high-throughput small-molecule screen to identify a novel chemical inhibitor of Clostridium difficile.

Clostridium difficile, a highly drug-resistant Gram-positive, spore-forming bacterium, remains a leading cause of hospital-acquired diarrhoea and antibiotic-associated colitis. Clinically, only a handful of antibiotics are used for treating C. difficile infection (CDI), suggesting a necessity for the development of new treatment options.

Applying reversible mutations of nodulation and nitrogen-fixation genes to study social cheating in Rhizobium etli-legume interaction.

Mutualisms are common in nature, though these symbioses can be quite permeable to cheaters in situations where one individual parasitizes the other by discontinuing cooperation yet still exploits the benefits of the partnership. In the Rhizobium-legume system, there are two separate contexts, namely nodulation and nitrogen fixation processes, by which resident Rhizobium individuals can benefit by cheating. Here, we constructed reversible and irreversible mutations in key nodulation and nitrogen-fixation pathways of Rhizobium etli and compared their interaction with plant hosts Phaseolus vulgaris to that of wild type.

Role of a TehA homolog in Vibrio cholerae C6706 antibiotic resistance and intestinal colonization.

Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the devastating diarrheal disease cholera. A number of regulatory pathways are involved in V. cholerae pathogenesis and antibiotic resistance.

LysR family activator-regulated major facilitator superfamily transporters are involved in Vibrio cholerae antimicrobial compound resistance and intestinal colonisation.

Expression of a multidrug resistance transporter renders bacterial cells resistant to a variety of drugs. The major facilitator superfamily (MFS) comprises the largest group of bacterial multidrug transporters. There are over 20 MFS efflux pumps annotated on the genome of Vibrio cholerae, but little is known about their functions and regulation.