Costs and benefits of rapid screening of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriage in intensive care units: a prospective multicenter study.

Introduction: Pre-emptive isolation of suspected methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carriers is a cornerstone of successful MRSA control policies. Implementation of such strategies is hampered when using conventional cultures with diagnostic delays of three to five days, as many non-carriers remain unnecessarily isolated. Rapid diagnostic testing (RDT) reduces the amount of unnecessary isolation days, but costs and benefits have not been accurately determined in intensive care units (ICUs).

Molecular epidemiology of Staphylococcus aureus colonization in a burn center.

The aim of this study was to investigate carriage of Staphylococcus aureus by patients and health care workers (HCW) and to define the genetic relationship of S. aureus strains isolated from burn wounds. At admission, 19/55 (34.

Phylogenetic relationships of necrogenic Erwinia and Brenneria species as revealed by glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase gene sequences.

Recent examination of the relationships of the dry necrosis-inducing (necrogenic) erwinias using 16S rDNA sequences demonstrated that these bacteria comprise a polyphyletic group and, therefore, have been subdivided into three distinct genera, Erwinia, Brenneria and Pectobacterium, with the classical 'amylovora' group species now being distributed nearly evenly among the first two. To further assess the molecular evolutionary relationships between current necrogenic Erwinia and Brenneria species, as well as between these genera and the exclusively soft-rotting genus Pectobacterium, the glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (gapDH) genes from 57 Erwinia and Brenneria isolates along with Pectobacterium type strains were PCR-amplified, sequenced and subjected to phylogenetic analysis. Pairwise alignments of cloned gapDH genes revealed remarkably high interspecies genetic diversity among necrogenic isolates.

Different effect of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor or bacterial infection on bone-marrow cells of cyclophosphamide-treated or irradiated mice.

In the present study, the effect of treatment with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) on cellular composition of the bone marrow and the number of circulating leucocytes of granulocytopenic mice, whether or not infected with Staphylococcus aureus, was assessed. With two monoclonal antibodies, six morphologically distinct cell populations in the bone marrow could be characterised and quantitated by two-dimensional flow cytometry. Granulocytopenia was induced by cyclophosphamide or sublethal irradiation.