Advance Directives for Adolescents and Young Adults Living With Neuromuscular Disease: A Nurse Practitioner-Driven Intervention.

The literature shows that adolescents and young adults (AYAs) living with neuromuscular disease want to have discussions about goals of care and want them sooner. Conversations about goals of care and advance directives are not common practice in the neuromuscular clinic setting. This nurse practitioner-led project used a conversation tool as a 1-time intervention to guide conversations about participants' goals and wishes, comparing the number of participants with advance directives before and after the use of the intervention, and their satisfaction with having had a conversation about goals of care using this tool was measured.

Shiga Toxin-Producing Testing in New York 2011-2022 Reveals Increase in Non-O157 Identifications.

Shiga toxin-producing (STEC) are an important cause of bacterial enteric infection. STEC strains cause serious human gastrointestinal disease, which may result in life-threatening complications such as hemolytic uremic syndrome. They have the potential to impact public health due to diagnostic challenges of identifying non-O157 strains in the clinical laboratory.

Challenges Associated with Investigating Enteritidis with Low Genomic Diversity in New York State: The Impact of Adjusting Analytical Methods and Correlation with Epidemiological Data.

Defining investigation-worthy genomic clusters among strains of Enteritidis is challenging because of their highly clonal nature. We investigated a cluster identified by core genome multilocus sequence typing (cgMLST) consisting of 265 isolates with isolation dates spanning two and a half years. This cluster experienced chaining, growing to a range of 14 alleles.

Advance Directives for Adolescents and Young Adults Living With Neuromuscular Disease: An Integrative Review of the Literature.

The use of advance directives is an important component in helping individuals living with chronic and/or life-threatening illnesses establish goals of care and make decisions regarding care at the end of life. Advance care planning may help achieve enhanced health outcomes, yet it is not routinely offered to adolescents/young adults living with neuromuscular disease. An integrative review of the literature was conducted to examine the evidence related to the use of advance directives with adolescents/young adults living with neuromuscular disease and to identify reasons why they are not being used and how this can be improved.

Improvements to the Success of Outbreak Investigations of Legionnaires' Disease: 40 Years of Testing and Investigation in New York State.

Since 1978, the New York State Department of Health's public health laboratory, Wadsworth Center (WC), in collaboration with epidemiology and environmental partners, has been committed to providing comprehensive public health testing for Legionella in New York. Statewide, clinical case counts have been increasing over time, with the highest numbers identified in 2017 and 2018 (1,022 and 1,426, respectively). Over the course of more than 40 years, the WC Legionella testing program has continuously implemented improved testing methods.

PulseNet and the Changing Paradigm of Laboratory-Based Surveillance for Foodborne Diseases.

PulseNet, the National Molecular Subtyping Network for Foodborne Disease Surveillance, was established in 1996 through a collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service; the US Food and Drug Administration; 4 state public health laboratories; and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. The network has since expanded to include 83 state, local, and food regulatory public health laboratories. In 2016, PulseNet was estimated to be helping prevent an estimated 270 000 foodborne illnesses annually.

LMWH in IVF - Biomarkers and benefits.

There is biological plausibility that coagulation activation underlies a proportion of in vitro fertilisation IVF failures and recurrent early clinical pregnancy loss (RPL). However, low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) use, based upon previous clinical outcome alone, is not effective in preventing RPL. RPL is heterogeneous in mechanism.

Implementation of Salmonella serotype determination using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in a state public health laboratory.

We examined the use of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to predict serotype for Salmonella isolates. Between 2012 and 2014 we assessed 4481 isolates, resulting in >90% assigned serotypes. PFGE is efficient for determining serotype in the majority of cases and results in expedited serotype determination, as well as cost savings.

Genomic Resolution of Outbreak-Associated Legionella pneumophila Serogroup 1 Isolates from New York State.

Unlabelled: A total of 30 Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 isolates representing 10 separate legionellosis laboratory investigations ("outbreaks") that occurred in New York State between 2004 and 2012 were selected for evaluation of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) approaches for molecular subtyping of this organism. Clinical and environmental isolates were available for each outbreak and were initially examined by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Sequence-based typing alleles were extracted from WGS data yielding complete sequence types (ST) for isolates representing 8 out of the 10 outbreaks evaluated in this study.