Publications by authors named "Rita Abdallah"

is the etiological agent of Q fever, a worldwide zoonosis able to cause large outbreaks. The disease is polymorphic. Symptomatic primary infection is named acute Q fever and is associated with hepatitis, pneumonia, fever, and auto-immune complications while persistent focalized infections, mainly endocarditis, and vascular infections, occur in a minority of patients but are potentially lethal.

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Financial toxicity or the debt a cancer survivor incurs from the costs of their medical cancer care is an understudied aspect in the clinical development of experimental therapeutic agents. The United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program studies experimental therapeutic agents like radiopharmaceuticals in both early and late phase trials, which provide opportunities to comprehend more clearly the possible sources of financial toxicity incurred by cancer survivors. We reviewed the academic scholarship describing fiscal and social costs involved in the development of therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study emphasizes the importance of the human gut microbiome in understanding various diseases, linking its alterations to chronic inflammation, infections, and colorectal cancer.
  • Researchers employed a "microscomics" approach using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to examine stool samples from healthy individuals, categorizing the structures present based on their morphology.
  • The findings revealed previously undetected "minimicrobes" from the Candidate Phyla Radiation (CPR), highlighting the complementary value of this technique alongside traditional microbiological methods like metagenomics.
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The gut microbiota is considered to play a key role in human health. As a consequence, deciphering its microbial diversity is mandatory. A polyphasic taxonogenomic strategy based on the combination of phenotypic and genomic analyses was used to characterize a new bacterium, strain Marseille-P2911.

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Strain 6021061333 was isolated from the sputum of 16-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis following a pulmonary exacerbation. This bacterial strain could not be identified by our systematic MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry screening on a MicroFlex. This led to the sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, which shows 97.

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We used phenotypic, genomic and phylogenetic information following the taxono-genomics approach to demonstrate that strain Marseille-P3254, isolated from an ileal sample of a 76-year old woman who underwent upper and lower digestive tract endoscopy for esophagitis and colonic polyp, is representative of a novel bacterial genus within the family Erysipelotrichaceae in the phylum Firmicutes. It is an anaerobic Gram-negative bacterium without catalase and oxidase activities. The genome of strain Marseille-P3254 is 2,468,496-bp long with a 40.

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The association between Clostridium species identification from stool samples in preterm neonates and the occurrence of necrotizing enterocolitis has been increasingly reported. To confirm the specific impact of Clostridium butyricum in this pathology, selective culture procedure was used for Clostridia isolation. Whole-genome analysis was employed to investigate genomic relationships between isolates.

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Strain 6021052837 was isolated from the blood culture of a hemodialysis patient on Chocolat PolyViteX medium at 37 °C after 2 days of incubation. Colonies could not be identified by our systematic MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry screening. The16S rRNA gene sequencing showed that the strain had 96% sequence identity with Cohnella formosensis (Genbank accession number JN806384), the phylogenetic closely related type strain of a species with standing in nomenclature, which putatively classifies it as a new species.

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Rickettsioses are globally distributed and caused by the family , which comprise a diverse and expanding list of organisms. These include two genera, and Serology has been traditionally the mainstay of diagnosis, although this has been limited by cross-reactions among closely related members and diminished sensitivity/utility in the acute phase of illness. Other techniques, such as nucleic acid amplification tests using blood specimens or tissue swabs/biopsy specimens, sequencing, and mass spectrometry, have emerged in recent years for both pathogen and vector identification.

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Research on the relationship between changes in the gut microbiota and human disease, including AIDS, is a growing field. However, studies on the eukaryotic component of the intestinal microbiota have just begun and have not yet been conducted in HIV-infected patients. Moreover, eukaryotic community profiling is influenced by the use of different methodologies at each step of culture-independent techniques.

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: Studies concerning asthma in Lebanon investigated environmental and personal factors but none of them took into account the effect of nutritional habits. Our objective is to assess the effect of nutritional habits on asthma and allergies in Lebanese children aged 3-16 years old. : This is a case-control study, conducted between December 2015 and April 2016.

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A rickettsial organism harboured by Amblyomma triguttatum ticks on Barrow Island, Western Australia, was discovered after reports of possible rickettsiosis among local workers. Subsequent isolation of this rickettsia (strain BWI-1) in cell culture and analysis of its phylogenetic, genotypic and phenotypic relationships with type strains of Rickettsia species with standing in nomenclature suggested that it was sufficiently divergent to warrant its classification as a new species. Multiple gene comparison of strain BWI-1 revealed degrees of sequence similarity with Rickettsia raoultii, its closest relative, of 99.

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Using a polyphasic taxonomic strategy, an aerobic, Gram-negative, non-motile, yellow pigmented rod isolated from a sputum sample of a patient with pneumonia was characterised. This bacterial strain, designated G972, could not be identified by our systematic MALDI-TOF screening on a MicroFlex. This led to the sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, which shows 98.

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Over the past decade, new culture methods coupled to genome and metagenome sequencing have enabled the number of isolated bacterial species with standing in nomenclature to rise to more than 15,000 whereas it was only 1791 in 1980. 'Culturomics', a new approach based on the diversification of culture conditions, has enabled the isolation of more than 1000 distinct human-associated bacterial species since 2012, including 247 new species. This strategy was demonstrated to be complementary to metagenome sequencing for the exhaustive study of the human microbiota and its roles in health and diseases.

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Purpose: We report demographic, clinical, and psychosocial factors associated with adherence to vaginal dilation and describe the sexual and marital or nonmarital dyadic functioning of women following high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy for endometrial cancer.

Methods And Materials: We retrospectively evaluated women aged 18 years or older in whom early-stage endometrial (IAgr3-IIB) cancers were treated by HDR intravaginal brachytherapy within the past 3.5 years.

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