Publications by authors named "Davide Santospirito"

Article Synopsis
  • Snakes are popular pets and often carry a Gram-negative bacterium in their cloacal microbiota, which can cause severe infections and is frequently antibiotic-resistant.
  • A study analyzed 419 cloacal swabs from various snake families, finding a 59.9% prevalence of the bacteria, with 35.5% of strains being multidrug resistant (MDR).
  • Factors like snake age, farm size, type of feeding (thawed or home-raised vs. commercial), and cleaning frequency correlated with higher MDR prevalence, while snake reproductive status did not show a significant impact.
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Naja atra subsp. atra cardiotoxin 1 (CTX-1), produced by Chinese cobra snakes, belonging to Elapidae family, is included in the three-finger toxin family and exerts high cytotoxicity and antimicrobial activity too. Using as template mainly the tip and the subsequent β-strand of the first "finger" of this toxin, different sequences of 20 amino acids linear peptides have been designed in order to avoid toxic effects but to maintain or even strengthen the partial antimicrobial activity already seen for the complete toxin.

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Background: Antimicrobial resistance is a growing threat to public health. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a relevant pathogen causing human and animal infections, frequently displaying high levels of resistance to commonly used antimicrobials. The increasing difficulty to develop new effective antibiotics have discouraged investment in this area and only a few new antibiotics are currently under development.

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Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) may cause suppurative otitis externa with severe inflammation and ulceration in dogs. Multidrug resistance is commonly reported for this organism, creating a difficult therapeutic challenge.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vitro antimicrobial activity of a gel containing 0.

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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in a wide range of infectious agents is a growing public health threat. Birds of prey are considered indicators of the presence of AMR bacteria in their ecosystem because of their predatory behaviour. Only few data are reported in the literature on AMR strains isolated from animals housed in zoos and none about AMR in raptors housed in zoological gardens.

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