Prevalence of skin allograft discards as a result of serological and molecular microbiological screening in a regional skin bank in Italy.

Background: Postmortem skin is widely used in the treatment of patients with severe burns. Skin specimens must be screened for transmissible agents including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) virus, human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV), cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Treponema pallidum.

Methods: Four hundred and sixty-one cadaveric donors underwent serological and molecular microbiological (polymerase chain reaction, PCR) screening at Siena Skin Bank between 2000 and 2004.

Comparative evaluation of three computerized algorithms for prediction of antiretroviral susceptibility from HIV type 1 genotype.

Objectives: To compare three methods for using HIV-1 genotype to predict antiretroviral drug susceptibility.

Methods: We applied three genotypic interpretation algorithms to 478 reverse transcriptase (RT) and 410 protease sequences for which phenotypic data were available. Sequences were obtained from clinical practice and from published sequences in the Stanford HIV-1 RT and Protease Sequence Database.

A Mediterranean arbovirus: the Toscana virus.

Toscana virus (Bunyaviridae family, Phlebovirus genus) is a sandfly fever virus responsible for human neurological infections. Sandfly viruses are transmitted by insect vectors (Phlebotomus species) and the infection is present in climatic areas that allow the life cycle of the vector. The arthropode-borne Toscana virus is the etiologic agent of meningitis, meningoencephalitis, and encephalitis.

Serological survey of Toscana virus infections in a high-risk population in Italy.

Toscana virus is the most important agent responsible for meningitis in central Italy. We report a serosurveillance study, using an immunoenzymatic assay, of 360 serum samples harvested from a high-risk population occupationally exposed to Toscana virus in two regions of Italy, Tuscany and Piedmont. The results indicates a seroprevalence of Toscana virus of 77.

Divergent distribution of HIV-1 drug-resistant variants on and off antiretroviral therapy.

Objective: To investigate the distribution of drug-resistant HIV-1 variants in plasma RNA and peripheral blood monuclear cell (PBMC) DNA at treatment failure while on therapy and after stopping therapy.

Design: Fifty-eight patients failing their first highly active antiretroviral treatment while on therapy and 50 patients after a median of 18.6 weeks after treatment interruption following multiple treatment failures were analysed.

Fast duplex one-step RT-PCR for rapid differential diagnosis of entero- or toscana virus meningitis.

Acute meningitis is the most common neurologic disease that involves the central nervous system. The spectrum of infectious agents that cause neurologic infection is remarkably broad and numerous viruses are the most frequent cause of the aseptic meningitis syndrome. We applied a multiplex one-step method for the rapid detection of the genomic RNA of different neurotropic viruses: particles in the genus Enterovirus and Toscana virus, which are the most representative aetiologic agents in our country during the spring-summer period.

Development and significance of resistance to protease inhibitors in HIV-1-infected adults under triple-drug therapy in clinical practice.

Development of drug resistance is considered a major cause for failure of antiretroviral therapy in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected patients adherent to treatment. However, the rate of emergence and the significance of HIV-1 drug resistance in clinical practice have been not investigated thoroughly. Selection of HIV-1 variants that are genotypically resistant to protease inhibitors was studied in all the patients (n = 169) who completed at least 18 months of treatment with a protease inhibitor plus two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors at two urban Italian hospitals.

Search for Chlamydia pneumoniae genes and their expression in atherosclerotic plaques of carotid arteries.

Samples of atherosclerotic tissue from 58 patients undergoing carotid surgery were analysed by tissue culture and PCR for Chlamydia pneumoniae; PCR was performed to detect Omp1, 16S rRNA and HSP-70 genes. To understand the active pathogenic role of C. pneumoniae, a reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR) assay was applied to detect the specific RNAs expressed either in the replicative form, or in the cryptic form found in chronic infection.