A European approach to infection prevention and control goals.

The current pandemic caused by COVID-19 has underlined the importance of a joint effort and approach to ensure patient and health care worker safety in medical care throughout Europe. In addition, the recent flood disasters in Germany and other countries called for immediate joint action, in this case with regard to the prevention of water-borne infections. Environmental disasters will increase with consequences for hospitals and nursing homes.

Chemical disinfection in healthcare settings: critical aspects for the development of global strategies.

Chemical disinfection is an indispensable means of preventing infection. This holds true for healthcare settings, but also for all other settings where transmission of pathogens poses a potential health risk to humans and/or animals. Research on how to ensure effectiveness of disinfectants and the process of disinfection, as well as on when, how and where to implement disinfection precautions is an ongoing challenge requiring an interdisciplinary team effort.

Voltage-independent GluN2A-type NMDA receptor Ca signaling promotes audiogenic seizures, attentional and cognitive deficits in mice.

The NMDA receptor-mediated Ca signaling during simultaneous pre- and postsynaptic activity is critically involved in synaptic plasticity and thus has a key role in the nervous system. In GRIN2-variant patients alterations of this coincidence detection provoked complex clinical phenotypes, ranging from reduced muscle strength to epileptic seizures and intellectual disability. By using our gene-targeted mouse line (Grin2a), we show that voltage-independent glutamate-gated signaling of GluN2A-containing NMDA receptors is associated with NMDAR-dependent audiogenic seizures due to hyperexcitable midbrain circuits.