0000000000000405
AUTHOR
Cristina Romani
Molecular Typing Reveals Frequent Clustering among Human Isolates of Listeria monocytogenes in Italy
In Italy, the annual incidence of reported cases of listeriosis amounts in recent years (2004 to 2006) to 0.8 cases per million inhabitants. Our study is a subtyping analysis by serotyping, ribotyping, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis of 44 human isolates from apparently sporadic cases of infection in the Lombardy region and in the Province of Florence, Italy, in the years 1996 to 2007. Based on the results of the different subtyping methods, 10 occasions were detected when strains of L. monocytogenes with the same subtype were isolated from more than one listeriosis case. A total of 28 (66.7%) out of 44 isolates were attributed to molecular subtype clusters. Our data support t…
Shigella sonnei biotype g carrying class 2 integrons in southern Italy: a retrospective typing study by pulsed field gel electrophoresis
Abstract Background Emergence and global dissemination of multiresistant strains of enteric pathogens is a very concerning problem from both epidemiological and Public Health points of view. Shigella sonnei is the serogroup of Shigella most frequently responsible for sporadic and epidemic enteritis in developed countries. The dissemination is associated most often to human to human transmission, but foodborne episodes have also been described. In recent years the circulation of multiresistant strains of S. sonnei biotype g carrying a class 2 integron has been reported in many countries worldwide. In southern Italy a strain with similar properties has been responsible for a large community o…
Reinterpreting a community outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis in the light of molecular typing
Abstract Background In November 2005, a large outbreak due to Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) was observed within children who had eaten their meals at 53 school cafeterias in Florence and the surrounding area. A total of 154 isolates of S. Enteritidis were recovered from human cases between November 2005 and January 2006. All strains were assigned phage type 8 (PT8) and a common XbaI pulsotype. This paper reports the findings of a molecular epidemiological investigation performed on 124 strains of S. Enteritidis isolated in the years 2005 and 2006 in Florence and the surrounding area, including the epidemic isolates. Methods One hundred twenty-four human isolates …
Costs and Benefits of Orthographic Inconsistency in Reading: Evidence from a Cross-Linguistic Comparison.
We compared reading acquisition in English and Italian children up to late primary school analyzing RTs and errors as a function of various psycholinguistic variables and changes due to experience. Our results show that reading becomes progressively more reliant on larger processing units with age, but that this is modulated by consistency of the language. In English, an inconsistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs earlier on and it is demonstrated by faster RTs, a stronger effect of lexical variables and lack of length effect (by fifth grade). However, not all English children are able to master this mode of processing yielding larger inter-individual variability. In Italian, …
Characterization of Listeria monocytogenes isolates from human listeriosis cases in Italy.
ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to characterize by serotyping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and PCR amplification of virulence genes and markers of epidemic clones I, II, and III (ECI, ECII, and ECIII) 54 human isolates from apparently sporadic cases of infection occurring in the Lombardy region and in the province of Florence, Tuscany, Italy, in the years 1996 to 2007. Listeria monocytogenes isolates were provided by the clinical microbiology laboratories of the Lombardy region and the “Careggi” Hospital of Florence, Tuscany, Italy. Serotyping, PFGE after digestion with the AscI and ApaI enzymes, and PCR amplification for the inlA , inlC , and inlJ genes and ECI, ECII,…
Evaluation of a modified single-enzyme amplified fragment length polymorphism (SE-AFLP) technique for subtyping Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis
Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serotype Enteritidis is not readily subtyped beyond the level of phage type (PT). Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is generally acknowledged to be the most discriminating typing method for Salmonella, but only a restricted variety of PFGE types has been described for S. enterica serotype Enteritidis. In the present study, a modification of the SE-AFLP typing method was used to investigate both outbreak and apparently sporadic isolates of S. enterica serotype Enteritidis belonging to different PTs and/or PFGE types. The method proved to be as discriminatory as PFGE when combined with phage typing, and provided subtyping data consistent with epidemio…
Costs and benefits of orthographic inconsistency in reading:evidence from a cross-linguistic comparison
We compared reading acquisition in English and Italian children up to late primary school analyzing RTs and errors as a function of various psycholinguistic variables and changes due to experience. Our results show that reading becomes progressively more reliant on larger processing units with age, but that this is modulated by consistency of the language. In English, an inconsistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs earlier on and it is demonstrated by faster RTs, a stronger effect of lexical variables and lack of length effect (by fifth grade). However, not all English children are able to master this mode of processing yielding larger inter-individual variability. In Italian, …