Wheezing in children with pertussis associated with delayed pertussis diagnosis.

Background: The classic clinical features of paroxysmal pertussis are often absent in older children and adults and after vaccination. The California pertussis epidemic of 2010 occurred in a highly vaccinated population.

Methods: All pediatric patients (0-18 years) with positive pertussis polymerase chain reaction from July to December 2010 were identified retrospectively from the Kaiser SCAL database.

Evaluation of a high-throughput repetitive-sequence-based PCR system for DNA fingerprinting of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium complex strains.

Repetitive-sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) is useful for generating DNA fingerprints of diverse bacterial and fungal species. Rep-PCR amplicon fingerprints represent genomic segments lying between repetitive sequences. A commercial system that electrophoretically separates rep-PCR amplicons on microfluidic chips, and provides computer-generated readouts of results has been adapted for use with Mycobacterium species.

Deletion of RD1 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis mimics bacille Calmette-Guérin attenuation.

The tuberculosis (TB) vaccine bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is a live attenuated organism, but the mutation responsible for its attenuation has never been defined. Recent genetic studies identified a single DNA region of difference, RD1, which is absent in all BCG strains and present in all Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) strains. The 9 open-reading frames predicted within this 9.