Navigating the New Antimicrobial Stewardship Regulations.

Many health care facilities are navigating their way through the new antimicrobial stewardship standards and guidelines. The purpose of this article is to provide information for health care facilities to improve patient care. New regulations and guidelines surrounding antimicrobial stewardship have prompted facilities to review their process related to antimicrobial stewardship.

Silver or nitrofurazone impregnation of urinary catheters has a minimal effect on uropathogen adherence.

Purpose: Bacterial adherence to the urinary catheter is an early step in biofilm formation and the pathogenesis of catheter associated urinary tract infection. We studied in vitro the effect of silver or nitrofurazone impregnation of urinary catheters on uropathogen ability to adhere to urinary catheters.

Materials And Methods: We studied commercially available nitrofurazone-silicone, silicone only, silver-silicone-hydrogel, silicone-hydrogel, silver-latex-hydrogel and latex-hydrogel catheters.

CovR activation of the dipeptide permease promoter (PdppA) in Group A Streptococcus.

CovR, the two-component response regulator of Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococcus [GAS]) directly or indirectly represses about 15% of the genome, including genes encoding many virulence factors and itself. Transcriptome analyses also showed that some genes are activated by CovR. We asked whether the regulation by CovR of one of these genes, dppA, the first gene in an operon encoding a dipeptide permease, is direct or indirect.