Emergency treatment of a salmonella-infected abdominal aortic aneurysm associated with spondylodiscitis.

Aim: To report surgical treatment of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) associated with spondylodiscitis due to Salmonella in emergency setting.

Case Report: A 69-year-old male with an history of hypertension, presented with a ruptured AAA infected by nontyphoidal Salmonella (type H), associated with spondylodiscitis. Patient underwent an emergency operation consisting in surgical debridment of infected tissue and aortic replacement with a prosthetic Dacron graft impregnated with Gentamycine.

Inhibitors of multidrug resistant efflux systems in bacteria.

Resistance of bacteria to many classes of antibiotics is an increasing problem worldwide. Multidrug resistance efflux pumps are recognized as an important component of resistance in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Some bacterial efflux pumps may be selective for one substrate, such as tetracycline, or transport antibiotics of different classes, conferring a multiple drug resistance (MDR) phenotype.

Therapy expectations and physical comorbidity affect quality of life in chronic hepatitis C virus infection.

Unlabelled: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with a significant reduction of health related quality of life (QOL), the causes and mechanisms of which are still unknown. To explore whether treatment history could affect QOL, we examined patients with detectable HCV viraemia who had a different therapeutic background. Two hundred sixty-four consecutive subjects with chronic HCV infection and detectable viraemia were enrolled.

Alpha-defensin increase in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with hepatitis C virus chronic infection.

The alpha-defensin genes promoter regions contain a putative nuclear factors of activated T cells (NFAT)-binding site and it is known that hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein activates the interleukin (IL)-2 gene transcription through the NFAT pathway. The aims of this study were to investigate if HCV affects the alpha-defensin expression in peripheral human mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and to evaluate the existence of a correlation between alpha-defensins and liver damage in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Ninety patients with chronic hepatitis C, 30 with chronic hepatitis B and 25 healthy controls were enrolled.

Validity and reliability of the Italian version of the Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire (CLDQ-I) for the assessment of health-related quality of life.

Background: The Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire is a specific health-related quality of life assessment designed for patients with liver diseases.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to report on the validity, reliability and sensitivity to change of the Italian version (Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire-I) in subjects with HCV infection.

Subjects: The Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire-I was administered to 350 subjects with HCV infection together with the World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment, abbreviated version, a generic quality of life assessment.