Clinical predictors of the medical interventions provided to patients with low back pain in the emergency department.

Background: Low back pain is a common complaint in emergency departments (ED), where deviations from standard of care have been noted.

Objective: To relate the ordering of advanced imaging and opioid prescriptions with the presentation of low back pain in ED.

Methods: Six hundred adults with low back pain from three centers were prospectively analyzed for history, examination, diagnosis, and the ordering of tests and treatments.

Reliability of the clinical examination in the diagnosis of neurogenic versus vascular claudication.

Background Context: As research increasingly challenges the diagnostic accuracy of advanced imaging for lumbar spinal stenosis, the impression gleaned from the office evaluation becomes more important. Neurogenic claudication is a hallmark of lumbar spinal stenosis, but the reliability of clinical impression of claudication has not been studied.

Purpose: To determine the reliability of the clinical examination for neurogenic claudication in an idealized setting.

Production of viruses during a spring phytoplankton bloom in the South Pacific Ocean near of New Zealand.

Lagrangian studies of virus activity in pelagic environments over extended temporal scales are rare. To address this, viruses and bacteria were examined during the course of a natural phytoplankton bloom in the pelagic South Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. Daily samples were collected in a mesoscale eddy from year days 263-278 (September 19th-October 4th, 2008).

Molecular enumeration of an ecologically important cyanophage in a Laurentian Great Lake.

Considerable research has shown that cyanobacteria and the viruses that infect them (cyanophage) are pervasive and diverse in global lake populations. Few studies have seasonally analyzed freshwater systems, and little is known about the bacterial and viral communities that coexist during the harsh winters of the Laurentian Great Lakes. Here, we employed quantitative PCR to estimate the abundance of cyanomyoviruses in this system, using the portal vertex g20 gene as a proxy for cyanophage abundance and to determine the potential ecological relevance of these viruses.

A protocol for enumeration of aquatic viruses by epifluorescence microscopy using Anodisc™ 13 membranes.

Background: Epifluorescence microscopy is a common method used to enumerate virus-like particles (VLP) from environmental samples and relies on the use of filter membranes with pore sizes < 0.02 μm; the most commonly used protocols employ 25 mm Anodisc™ membranes with a built-in support ring. Other filters with small pore sizes exist, including the 13 mm Anodisc™ membranes without a support ring.