Publications by authors named "Haruko Saito"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated macrolide resistance in 68 patients with complex pulmonary diseases, focusing on how treatment affected resistance profiles.
  • Among patients not treated with macrolides, over half (52%) reverted to being susceptible to macrolides, while only a tiny fraction (2%) of those continuing treatment saw similar results.
  • The analysis of 30 resistant isolates revealed that seven had shifted to susceptible profiles, with reasons including related strains or reinfections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A new analytical protocol called MGIT-seq was developed to quickly identify subspecies and drug-resistant strains of nontuberculous mycobacteria for better treatment strategies.
  • In a study including 138 patients, this method demonstrated a high accuracy of 99.1% in species identification and successfully detected drug resistance in 19.4% of Mycobacterium avium complex and 1.9% of Mycobacterium abscessus isolates.
  • The results of MGIT-seq were highly consistent with traditional drug susceptibility tests, indicating it could streamline clinical practice by providing comprehensive results in one test.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unidentified Mycobacterium species are sometimes detected in respiratory specimens. We identified a novel Tsukamurella species (Tsukamurella sp. TY48, RIMD 2001001, CIP 111916), Tsukamurella toyonakaense, from a patient given a misdiagnosis of nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease caused by unidentified mycobacteria.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A slowly growing mycobacteria, identified as strain TY59, was isolated from sputum of an elderly man with pneumonia. Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene indicated that this strain was similar to members of the complex and closely related species. Strain TY59 has highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities to the type strains of (99.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although serum anti-glycopeptidolipid (GPL)-core IgA antibody is a highly specific test for infection with Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC), Mycobacterium abscessus, and its subspecies , subsp. , and subsp. (MAB), its use for the definitive diagnosis of MAC pulmonary disease (PD) and MAB-PD are unknown.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - A rare case is reported where an immunocompetent patient developed pleurisy from a fast-growing mycobacterium, despite having no prior issues with immunodeficiency or lung cancer recurrence.
  • - Eight months post-surgery for lung cancer, the patient presented with new lung lesions and pleurisy, which was linked to a rupture in a lung bulla as seen on CT scans showing pneumothorax.
  • - The findings stress the importance of including nontuberculous mycobacterial pleurisy in the diagnosis of pleural effusions, even in patients with healthy immune systems, highlighting the need for better genomic analysis in clinical settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Non-tuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease (NTM-PD) is becoming a significant health burden. Recent advances in analysis techniques have allowed the accurate identification of previously unknown NTM species. Here, we report a case of NTM-PD caused by a newly identified mycobacteria in an immunocompetent patient.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to evaluate different diagnostic methods for detecting Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in patients with significant diarrhea across 12 medical facilities in Japan, comparing them to the gold standard of toxigenic culture (TC).
  • Key findings indicated that nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) showed higher sensitivity (74%) compared to enzyme immunoassays (EIA) (41%) and performed similarly to the GDH algorithm (71%).
  • Overall, NAAT and the GDH algorithm demonstrated good negative predictive values (92% and 91%, respectively) but highlighted the complexity of choosing the optimal diagnostic approach amid varying performance metrics for CDI detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile is the leading cause of healthcare-associated infectious diarrhea in the developed world. Retrospective studies have shown a lower incidence of C. difficile infection (CDI) in Japan than in Europe or North America.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A 59-year-old man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma presented at our hospital with an abnormal shadow on the chest radiograph, which was obtained as part of a routine medical examination. Computed tomography of the chest revealed two nodules in the right upper lung with the longest diameter measuring 29 mm and 10 mm, respectively. A granulomatous disease was strongly suspected based on the histological features of the transbronchial lung biopsy specimen.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The macropore structure evolution of a silica monolith during the formation process was observed by laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) for two kinds of systems. The obtained LSCM images were further subjected to image analysis, and the geometrical parameters were calculated. On the basis of the parameters obtained, improved compositions for high efficiency preparation of macroporous monoliths are discussed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The geometrical properties of co-continuous macroporous silica monoliths have been studied by laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) and a comparison has been made with those obtained by conventional mercury intrusion method. Tetrahedral skeleton model (TMS), which mimics the gel skeleton shape of monoliths, was compared with real monoliths in terms of macropore and porosity using the geometrical parameters extracted from the LSCM observations. Liquid flow behavior through the macroporous silica monoliths was examined in comparison with those simulated using TSM, based on the geometrical properties obtained from LSCM observations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This paper describes the use of computational fluid dynamics for the calculation of the flow resistance through computer-generated models resembling silica monoliths. This study was undertaken to determine the effect of skeleton heterogeneity on the flow resistance and, more precisely, to test the hypothesis that increased skeleton heterogeneity decreases the flow resistance. To evaluate the proposed model, 24 real silica monoliths have been prepared using the same method, covering a wide range of skeleton sizes (2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_sessiongnk5pe3ueb773jpq684i3hjqp5qln23h): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once