Search results for "INFECTIOUS"
showing 10 items of 2953 documents
The VIRSTA score, a prediction score to estimate risk of infective endocarditis and determine priority for echocardiography in patients with Staphylo…
2016
International audience; Objectives - To develop and validate a prediction score, to quantify, within 48 h of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) diagnosis, the risk of IE, and therefore determine priority for urgent echocardiography. Methods - Consecutive adult patients with SAB in 8 French university hospitals between 2009 and 2011 were prospectively enrolled and followed-up 3 months. A predictive model was developed and internally validated using bootstrap procedures. Results - Among the 2008 patients enrolled, 221 (11.0%) had definite IE of whom 39 (17.6%) underwent valve surgery, 25% of them within 6 days of SAB diagnosis. Ten predictors independently associated with IE were used to …
Virotherapy in Germany—Recent Activities in Virus Engineering, Preclinical Development, and Clinical Studies
2021
Virotherapy research involves the development, exploration, and application of oncolytic viruses that combine direct killing of cancer cells by viral infection, replication, and spread (oncolysis) with indirect killing by induction of anti-tumor immune responses. Oncolytic viruses can also be engineered to genetically deliver therapeutic proteins for direct or indirect cancer cell killing. In this review—as part of the special edition on “State-of-the-Art Viral Vector Gene Therapy in Germany”—the German community of virotherapists provides an overview of their recent research activities that cover endeavors from screening and engineering viruses as oncolytic cancer therapeutics to their cli…
ILCs and T Cells Competing for Space: More Than a Numbers Game.
2017
T cell homeostasis critically depends on interleukin-7 (IL-7). In this issue of Immunity, Martin et al. (2017) provide evidence that IL-7 availability is regulated through a "cytokine sink" involving innate lymphoid cells that compete for and consume IL-7 and thereby restrict T cell homeostasis in lymphoid organs.
Interleukin-25-mediated resistance against intestinal trematodes does not depend on the generation of Th2 responses
2020
AbstractInterleukin-25 (IL-25) is recognized as the most relevant initiator of protective Th2 responses in intestinal helminth infections. It is well known that IL-25 induces resistance against several species of intestinal helminths, including the trematode Echinostoma caproni. E. caproni has been extensively used as an experimental model to study the factors determining the resistance to intestinal infections. Herein, we assessed the role of IL-25 in the generation of resistance in mice to E. caproni infections. ICR mice are permissive hosts for E. caproni in which chronic infections are developed in relation to the lack of IL-25 production in response to primary infection and the consequ…
HCV NS3 sequencing as a reliable and clinically useful tool for the assessment of genotype and resistance mutations for clinical samples with differe…
2016
OBJECTIVES: This study aims to evaluate the reliability and clinical utility of NS3 sequencing in hepatitis C virus (HCV) 1-infected patients who were candidates to start a PI-containing regimen. METHODS: NS3 protease sequencing was performed by in-house-developed HCV-1 subtype-specific protocols. Phylogenetic analysis was used to test sequencing reliability and concordance with previous genotype/subtype assignment by commercial genotyping assays. RESULTS: Five hundred and sixty-seven HCV plasma samples with quantifiable HCV-RNA from 326 HCV-infected patients were collected between 2011 and 2014. Overall, the success rate of NS3 sequencing was 88.9%. The success rate between the two subtype…
Expert Opinion on Three Phage Therapy Related Topics: Bacterial Phage Resistance, Phage Training and Prophages in Bacterial Production Strains
2018
Phage therapy is increasingly put forward as a "new" potential tool in the fight against antibiotic resistant infections. During the "Centennial Celebration of Bacteriophage Research" conference in Tbilisi, Georgia on 26-29 June 2017, an international group of phage researchers committed to elaborate an expert opinion on three contentious phage therapy related issues that are hampering clinical progress in the field of phage therapy. This paper explores and discusses bacterial phage resistance, phage training and the presence of prophages in bacterial production strains while reviewing relevant research findings and experiences. Our purpose is to inform phage therapy stakeholders such as po…
Subnational mapping of HIV incidence and mortality among individuals aged 15-49 years in sub-Saharan Africa, 2000-18: a modelling study
2021
Background. High-resolution estimates of HIV burden across space and time provide an important tool for tracking and monitoring the progress of prevention and control efforts and assist with improving the precision and efficiency of targeting efforts. We aimed to assess HIV incidence and HIV mortality for all second-level administrative units across sub-Saharan Africa. Methods. In this modelling study, we developed a framework that used the geographically specific HIV prevalence data collected in seroprevalence surveys and antenatal care clinics to train a model that estimates HIV incidence and mortality among individuals aged 15–49 years. We used a model-based geostatistical framework to e…
Lack of evidence of mimivirus replication in human PBMCs
2018
The Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus (APMV) was first isolated during a pneumonia outbreak in Bradford, England, and since its discovery many research groups devoted efforts to understand whether this virus could be associated to human diseases, in particular clinical signs and symptoms of pneumonia. In 2013, we observed cytopathic effect in amoebas (rounding and lysis) inoculated with APMV inoculated PBMCs (peripheral blood mononuclear cell) extracts, and at that point we interpreted those results as mimivirus replication in human PBMCs. Based on these results we decided to further investigate APMV replication in human PBMCs, by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and qPCR. No viral fac…
Monitoring of ticks and tick-borne pathogens through a nationwide research station network in Finland.
2020
In 2015 a long-term, nationwide tick and tick-borne pathogen (TBP) monitoring project was started by the Finnish Tick Project and the Finnish Research Station network (RESTAT), with the goal of producing temporally and geographically extensive data regarding exophilic ticks in Finland. In the current study, we present results from the first four years of this collaboration. Ticks were collected by cloth dragging from 11 research stations across Finland in May September 2015-2018 (2012-2018 in Seili). Collected ticks were screened for twelve different pathogens by qPCR: Borrelia afzelii, Borrelia garinii, Borrelia valaisiana, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto, Borrelia miyamotoi, Babesia sp…
Development of a Sensitive Detection Method for Alphaviruses and Its Use as a Virus Neutralization Assay
2021
Alphaviruses have a single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome that contains two open reading frames encoding either the non-structural or the structural genes. Upon infection, the genomic RNA is translated into the non-structural proteins (nsPs). NsPs are required for viral RNA replication and transcription driven from the subgenomic promoter (sgP). Transfection of an RNA encoding the luciferase gene under the control of the sgP into cells enabled the detection of replication-competent chikungunya virus (CHIKV) or Mayaro virus (MAYV) with high sensitivity as a function of the induced luciferase activity. This assay principle was additionally used to analyze virus-neutralizing antibodies in…