Publications by authors named "S Kittl"
Introduction: Veterinary clinical microbiology laboratories play a key role in antimicrobial stewardship, surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and prevention of healthcare associated-infections. However, there is a shortage of international harmonized guidelines covering all steps of veterinary bacterial culture from sample receipt to reporting.
Methods: In order to gain insights, the European Network for Optimization of Veterinary Antimicrobial Treatment (ENOVAT) designed an online survey focused on the practices and interpretive criteria used for bacterial culture and identification (C&ID), and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of animal bacterial pathogens.
Article Synopsis
- Q fever (QF) and Rift Valley fever (RVF) are prevalent zoonotic diseases in Africa that pose health and economic challenges, and accurate prevalence estimates are essential for effective disease control.
- The study assessed the agreement of diagnostic test results for QF and RVF in both humans and livestock across various labs and test types, using samples collected from rural Chad.
- Findings indicated fair to moderate inter-laboratory agreement in test results, highlighting that demographic factors such as age and location significantly influence test outcomes, emphasizing the importance of considering these variables in future epidemiological research.
The novel Porcine circovirus 3 (PCV-3) has been associated in the past years to different porcine diseases, including reproductive failure. The potential occurrence of PCV-3 in abortions from Swiss pig herds has not been investigated so far. Thus, we conducted a retrospective study on pig aborted cases submitted to our laboratory in the University of Bern during the last 10 years with the main aim of investigating the possible presence of PCV-3 in foetal and/or placental tissue.
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- Trueperella pyogenes, an opportunistic zoonotic bacterium, shows significant antimicrobial resistance and virulence, with limited study on its strains from both animals and humans.
- Researchers analyzed clinical strains from 31 animals and 8 humans, revealing notable resistance to antibiotics like streptomycin, sulfamethoxazole, and tetracycline, as well as genetic links among strains.
- Phylogenetic analysis found human strains closely related to those from cattle, indicating shared resistance profiles and suggesting cattle may be a source of human infections.
In this study, we investigated faecal specimens from legally hunted and road-killed red foxes, raccoons, raccoon dogs, badgers and martens in Germany for parasites and selected zoonotic bacteria. We found that Baylisascaris procyonis, a zoonotic parasite of raccoons, had spread to northeastern Germany, an area previously presumed to be free of this parasite. We detected various pathogenic bacterial species from the genera Listeria, Clostridium (including baratii), Yersinia and Salmonella, which were analysed using whole-genome sequencing.
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