Validity of urinary catheter specimens for diagnosis of urinary tract infection in patients with short-term catheterization.

Current guidelines recommend urine culture after catheter replacement to diagnose catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CA-UTI) in patients with long-term catheters, but it's unclear if this applies to short-term catheterizations. We studied 52 patients with catheters for less than 28 days, showing symptoms of CA-UTI. We collected urine from the catheter port initially and from the new catheter within 2 hours of replacement.

Properties and construction of plasmid pFW213, a shuttle vector with the oral Streptococcus origin of replication.

Streptococcus parasanguinis is among the most successful colonizers of the human body. Strain FW213 harbors a 7.0-kb cryptic plasmid, pFW213, with a copy number at 5 to 10 per chromosome.