Associations between Fetal Symptoms during Pregnancy and Neonatal Clinical Complications with Toxoplasmosis.

Introduction: Toxoplasmosis is a parasitism transmitted by , part of the TORCH complex, the most prevalent parasitism worldwide. It is asymptomatic in immunocompetent individuals but causes severe infections and developmental abnormalities in pregnant women, mainly affecting the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal system.

Methods: In our prospective study, we analyzed cases of recent maternal Toxoplasma infections confirmed by serological testing between 1996 and 2020 at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Semmelweis University.

Carnosic Acid Inhibits Herpes Simplex Virus Replication by Suppressing Cellular ATP Synthesis.

Acquiring resistance against antiviral drugs is a significant problem in antimicrobial therapy. In order to identify novel antiviral compounds, the antiviral activity of eight plants indigenous to the southern region of Hungary against herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2) was investigated. The plant extracts and the plant compound carnosic acid were tested for their effectiveness on both the extracellular and intracellular forms of HSV-2 on Vero and HeLa cells.

Liposomal Encapsulation Increases the Efficacy of Azithromycin against .

() is an obligate intracellular bacterium linked to ocular and urogenital infections with potentially serious sequelae, including blindness and infertility. First-line antibiotics, such as azithromycin (AZT) and doxycycline, are effective, but treatment failures have also been reported. Encapsulation of antibiotics in liposomes is considered an effective approach for improving their local effects, bioavailability, biocompatibility and antimicrobial activity.

Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase Cannot Inhibit Growth in HL-60 Human Neutrophil Granulocytes.

Aims: Neutrophil granulocytes are the major cells involved in ()-mediated inflammation and histopathology. A key protein in human intracellular antichlamydial defense is the tryptophan-degrading enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) which limits the growth of the tryptophan auxotroph . Despite its importance, the role of IDO in the intracellular defense against in neutrophils is not well characterized.

Stochastic Modeling of In Vitro Bactericidal Potency.

We provide a Galton-Watson model for the growth of a bacterial population in the presence of antibiotics. We assume that bacterial cells either die or duplicate, and the corresponding probabilities depend on the concentration of the antibiotic. Assuming that the mean offspring number is given by [Formula: see text] for some [Formula: see text], where c stands for the antibiotic concentration we obtain weakly consistent, asymptotically normal estimator both for [Formula: see text] and for the minimal inhibitory concentration, a relevant parameter in pharmacology.

Ambroxol Treatment Suppresses the Proliferation of in Murine Lungs.

Ambroxol (Ax) is used as a mucolytics in the treatment of respiratory tract infections. Ax, at a general dose for humans, does not alter growth in mice. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the potential anti-chlamydial effect of Ax at a concentration four timed higher than that used in human medicine.

Beneficial Immunomodulatory Effects of Fluticasone Propionate in -Infected Mice.

The associations between inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) use and pulmonary infections remains controversial. accounts for asthma exacerbations; however, there are no data regarding ICS effects on infections. Thus, we investigated whether fluticasone propionate (FP) or budesonide (BUD) could affect infection in vitro and in vivo, focusing on the possible mechanisms that lead to potential anti-chlamydial outcomes.

Decoding Covid-19 with the SARS-CoV-2 Genome.

Purpose Of Review: SARS-CoV-2, the recently emerged coronavirus (CoV) that is responsible for the current global pandemic Covid-19, first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. Here, we summarise details of the SARS-CoV-2 genome to assist understanding of the emergence, evolution and diagnosis of this deadly new virus.

Recent Findings: Based on high similarities in the genome sequences, the virus is thought to have arisen from SARS-like CoVs in bats but the lack of an intermediate species containing a CoV with even greater similarity has so far eluded discovery.

Identification of similar epitopes between severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 and Bacillus Calmette-Guérin: potential for cross-reactive adaptive immunity.

Objectives: Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination has been implicated in protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and as a non-specific immunisation method against the virus. We therefore decided to investigate T-cell and B-cell epitopes within the BCG-Pasteur strain proteome for similarity to immunogenic peptides of SARS-CoV-2.

Methods: We used NetMHC 4.

Correlation between detergent activity and anti-herpes simplex virus-2 activity of commercially available vaginal gels.

Objective: Herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2) infections are almost exclusively sexually transmitted. The presence of vaginal gels during sexual activity may have a significant positive or negative impact on viral transmission. Therefore we investigated three off-the-shelf vaginal lubricants and one pH restoring gel to evaluate their impact on HSV-2 replication.

Azithromycin-liposomes as a novel approach for localized therapy of cervicovaginal bacterial infections.

Background: Efficient localized cervicovaginal antibacterial therapy, enabling the delivery of antibiotic to the site of action at lower doses while escaping systemic drug effects and reducing the risk of developing microbial resistance, is attracting considerable attention. Liposomes have been shown to allow sustained drug release into vaginal mucosa and improve delivery of antibiotics to bacterial cells and biofilms. Azithromycin (AZI), a potent broad-spectrum macrolide antibiotic, has not yet been investigated for localized therapy of cervicovaginal infections, although it is administered orally for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.

Antimicrobial Resistance Screening in Chlamydia trachomatis by Optimized McCoy Cell Culture System and Direct qPCR-Based Monitoring of Chlamydial Growth.

Obligate intracellular localization of Chlamydia trachomatis (C. trachomatis) complicates antimicrobial sensitivity testing efforts that we are so accustomed to in routine bacteriology. Cell culture systems with immunofluorescence staining, to identify cellular inclusions in the presence of various concentrations of antimicrobial drugs, are still the most pervasive techniques, but more specific and sensitive nucleic acid concentration measuring methods are increasingly being used.

Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase Activity in and Infected Mouse Lung Tissues.

infections are the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections with potentially debilitating sequelae, such as infertility. Mouse models are generally used for vaccine development, to study the immune response and histopathology associated with infection. An important question regarding murine models is the identification of murine host genes responsible for the elimination of the murine and human strains.

Vaginal Gel Component Hydroxyethyl Cellulose Significantly Enhances the Infectivity of Serovars D and E.

The transmission of the urogenital serovars of can be significantly influenced by vaginal gels. Hydroxyethyl cellulose is a commonly used gelling agent that can be found in vaginal gels. Hydroxyethyl cellulose showed a concentration-dependent growth-enhancing effect on serovars D and E, with a 26.

Infection Exacerbates Atherosclerosis in ApoB100only/LDLR Mouse Strain.

Aims: Hyperlipidaemia model animals have been used to elucidate the role of infection in atherosclerosis. The aims of this study were to investigate the proatherogenic effect of multiple infections in ApoB100only/LDLR mice which based on lipid profile can be regarded as the most suitable mouse model of human hypercholesterolemia and to compare the lesion development to that in a major atherosclerosis model ApoE mice.

Methods And Results: Aorta samples of ApoB100only/LDLR mice infected three times with were subjected to morphometric analyses.

Growth characteristics of Chlamydia trachomatis in human intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells.

Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular bacterium causing infections of the eyes, urogenital and respiratory tracts. Asymptomatic, repeat and chronic infections with C. trachomatis are common in the urogenital tract potentially causing severe reproductive pathology.

-acetyl-cysteine increases the replication of and prolongs the clearance of the pathogen from mice.

Within the community, 10 % of acquired pneumonia is caused by . -acetyl-cysteine (NAC) is one of the most commonly used mucolytics in respiratory diseases, but its effect on infection has not yet been investigated. In this study, our aim was to investigate whether NAC influences the replication of After determining that NAC does have an effect on replication, the effect of an alternative drug called Ambroxol (Ax) was investigated.

Assembly and use of high-density recombinant peptide chips for large-scale ligand screening is a practical alternative to synthetic peptide libraries.

Background: Recombinant peptide chips could constitute a versatile complementation to state-of-the-art in situ (chemical on-chip) synthesis, particle-based printing, or pre-manufactured peptide spotting. Bottlenecks still impeding a routine implementation - from restricted peptide lengths, low diversity and low array densities to high costs - could so be overcome.

Methods: To assess overall performance, we assembled recombinant chips composed of 38,400 individual peptide spots on the area of a standard 96-well microtiter plate from comprehensive, highly diverse (>107 single clones) short random peptide libraries.

A direct quantitative PCR-based measurement of herpes simplex virus susceptibility to antiviral drugs and neutralizing antibodies.

Herpes simplex viruses (HSV) are common human pathogens that can cause painful but benign manifestations and recurrent complaints, but can also cause significant morbidity and mortality on infection of the eye or brain and with disseminated infection of an immunosuppressed patient or a neonate. HSV growth inhibition measurement by plaque or yield reduction is a key task in the development of novel antiviral compounds but the manual methods are very labour intensive. The sensitive and specific PCR technology could be an effective method for quantitation of HSV DNA related to virus replication; however the currently described PCR approaches have a major limitation, namely the requirement of purification of DNA from the infected cells.

High dynamic range detection of Chlamydia trachomatis growth by direct quantitative PCR of the infected cells.

Chlamydiae are obligate intracellular bacteria developing in an intracytoplasmic niche, the inclusion. Chlamydia growth measurement by inclusion counting is a key task in the development of novel antichlamydial antibiotics and in vaccine studies. Most of the current counting methods rely on the immunofluorescent staining of the inclusions and either manual or automatic microscopy detection and enumeration.

Protection promoted by pGP3 or pGP4 against Chlamydia muridarum is mediated by CD4(+) cells in C57BL/6N mice.

Urogenital tract infection with Chlamydia trachomatis is a leading cause of sexually transmitted infections. There is currently no commercially available vaccine against C. trachomatis.

Anti-chlamydial effect of plant peptides.

Even in asymptomatic cases of Chlamydia trachomatis infection, the aim of the antibiotic strategy is eradication of the pathogen so as to avoid the severe late sequelae, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, and tubal infertility. Although first-line antimicrobial agents have been demonstrated to be predominantly successful in the treatment of C. trachomatis infection, treatment failures have been observed in some cases.

Expression of Chlamydia muridarum plasmid genes and immunogenicity of pGP3 and pGP4 in different mouse strains.

Chlamydia muridarum carries a cryptic plasmid (pMoPn) of 7.5kb, which encodes seven genes. Our aims were to describe the transcriptional pattern of the pMoPn genes in C.

Highly immunoreactive IgG antibodies directed against a set of twenty human proteins in the sera of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis identified by protein array.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common adult-onset motor neuron disorder, is characterized by the progressive and selective loss of upper and lower motor neurons. Diagnosis of this disorder is based on clinical assessment, and the average survival time is less than 3 years. Injections of IgG from ALS patients into mice are known to specifically mark motor neurons.