Microbiological efficacy and tolerability of a new, non-alcohol-based hand disinfectant.

Objective: Alcohol-based hand disinfectants are widely used in hospitals. Occasionally, there is a need for non-alcohol-based products, but alternatives have been scarce. We studied the microbiological efficacy and tolerability of a water-based hand disinfectant for healthcare workers.

Work hours, work stress, and collaboration among ward staff in relation to risk of hospital-associated infection among patients.

Objectives: To examine the association between work hours, work stress, and collaboration among the ward personnel, and the risk of hospital-associated infection among patients.

Design: Cross-sectional data on hospital infections were collected between March and June 2004. These data were linked with ward-level responses to a personnel survey collected during the same time period.

Proposal for common Nordic epidemiological terms and definitions for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The recent increase in the incidence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in all the Nordic countries prompted the Scandinavian Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (SSAC) to create the 'SSAC Working Party on MRSA' with the objective to identify methods to keep the invasive MRSA infections in the Nordic countries below 1%. The lack of common definitions was recognized as a major obstacle for a joint Nordic effort to combat MRSA. The aim of this publication is to present proposals for epidemiological definitions of individual cases, for how to report MRSA frequency per country, and for communication of MRSA strain characteristics between the countries.

Elimination of epidemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus from a university hospital and district institutions, Finland.

From August 1991 to October 1992, two successive outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) occurred at a hospital in Finland. During and after these outbreaks, MRSA was diagnosed in 202 persons in our medical district; >100 cases involved epidemic MRSA. When control policies failed to stop the epidemic, more aggressive measures were taken, including continuous staff education, contact isolation for MRSA-positive patients, systematic screening for persons exposed to MRSA, cohort nursing of MRSA-positive and MRSA-exposed patients in epidemic situations, and perception of the 30 medical institutions in that district as one epidemiologic entity brought under surveillance and control of the infection control team of Turku University Hospital.

Early impairment of coronary flow reserve is not associated with Chlamydia pneumoniae antibodies.

Background: Chlamydia pneumoniae infection has been associated with atherosclerosis by sero-epidemiological, histopathological and interventional studies, and animal experiments. We hypothesized that if chlamydial infection is causative of atherosclerosis, the occurrence of antibodies against C. pneumoniae should be associated with coronary vasomotor dysfunction - an early sign of atherosclerosis.