[Identifying and treating alcohol use disorders in the elderly].

IDENTIFYING AND TREATING ALCOHOL USE DISORDERS IN THE ELDERLY Aging does not prevent the occurrence of alcohol use disorders, the frequency of which declines little with age. And advancing age increases the risks and effects of alcohol consumption (even seemingly modest) or the damages caused by alcohol use disorders. Polypathology, which is more frequent with age and a source of polymedication for the elderly, further increases the risks and damages incurred, as does the concomitant use of other psychoactive substances.

An Automated Sample Preparation Instrument to Accelerate Positive Blood Cultures Microbial Identification by MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry (VitekMS).

Sepsis is the leading cause of death among patients in intensive care units (ICUs) requiring an early diagnosis to introduce efficient therapeutic intervention. Rapid identification (ID) of a causative pathogen is key to guide directed antimicrobial selection and was recently shown to reduce hospitalization length in ICUs. Direct processing of positive blood cultures by MALDI-TOF MS technology is one of the several currently available tools used to generate rapid microbial ID.

Multiplex sorting of foodborne pathogens by on-chip free-flow magnetophoresis.

This study reports multiplex sorting of Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli 0157, from broth cultures and from pathogen-spiked skinned chicken breast enrichment broths by employing microfluidic free-flow magnetophoresis. Magnetic beads of different sizes and magnetite content, namely Dynabeads anti-salmonella and Hyglos-Streptavidin beads together with the corresponding pathogen-specific biotinylated recombinant phages, were utilised as affinity solid phases for the capture and concentration of viable S. typhimurium and E.

On-chip acoustophoretic isolation of microflora including S. typhimurium from raw chicken, beef and blood samples.

Pathogen analysis in food samples routinely involves lengthy growth-based pre-enrichment and selective enrichment of food matrices to increase the ratio of pathogen to background flora. Similarly, for blood culture analysis, pathogens must be isolated and enriched from a large excess of blood cells to allow further analysis. Conventional techniques of centrifugation and filtration are cumbersome, suffer from low sample throughput, are not readily amenable to automation and carry a risk of damaging biological samples.

Digital antimicrobial susceptibility testing using the MilliDrop technology.

We present the MilliDrop Analyzer (MDA), a droplet-based millifluidic system for digital antimicrobial susceptibility testing (D-AST), which enables us to determine minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) precisely and accurately. The MilliDrop technology was validated by using resazurin for fluorescence readout, for comparison with standard methodology, and for conducting reproducibility studies. In this first assessment, the susceptibility of a reference Gram-negative strain Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 to gentamicin, chloramphenicol, and nalidixic acid were tested by the MDA, VITEK®2, and broth microdilution as a reference standard.