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Wolbachia Bacteria Could Help Stop Mosquitoes Spreading Zika Virus, Study Finds

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The Aedes aegypti mosquito, the more abundant of the two species known to spread the Zika virus, are less able to spread the virus if they are exposed to the bacteria, according to a study published in the medical journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The bacteria is already being used on the same mosquitoes as a way to curb the spread of the dengue virus, which, like Zika, is a flavivirus.

Mosquitoes containing this bacterium did not become infected with the Zika virus when given saliva from other infected mosquitoes, researchers from the Rene Rachou-Fiocruz Research Center in Brazil discovered. When they did the same test in mosquitoes without the Wolbachia bacteria, approximately 85 percent of mosquitoes became infected with the Zika virus.

“The results presented here indicate that Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes represent a realistic and effective option to combat the Zika virus burden in Brazil and potentially in other countries and should be considered as an integral part of future control efforts,” the authors concluded.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told that experimental treatments like this one may be key to stopping the Aedes aeygpti mosquito, which is notoriously hard to eradicate.

“These are clever ways to try to interrupt the transmission of the virus in an ecologically sensitive way, while we’re waiting to get a vaccine developed,” Schaffner said.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito can live indoors and bite during the day, Schaffner noted, making it extremely difficult to kill with normal outdoor spraying. Spraying may need to be used with other experimental treatments, including used genetically modified mosquitoes, to cut down on the population, he said.

“If you look realistically at what we have currently available in all of our local municipal public health jurisdictions … funding for mosquito abatement, it varies enormously from municipality to municipality,” Schaffner said. “It’s focused on nuisance mosquitoes and not disease-causing mosquitoes and Aedes aegypti is much more tenacious,” than other mosquito species.

More information is needed about the feasibility of infecting the mosquitoes with the bacteria, since the cost and technology needed may make it impractical outside of a lab setting, Schaffner said.

Source: ABC

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Nurses’ scrubs often contaminated with bad bugs

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Bad bugs readily spread from patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) to nurses’ scrubs and the room, according to research being presented at IDWeek 2016™. The sleeves and pockets of the scrubs and the bed railing were the most likely to be contaminated.

The study tracked the transmission of bacteria known to be particularly troublesome in hospitals, including those such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are resistant to many antibiotics.

“We know there are bad germs in hospitals but we’re just beginning to understand how they are spread,” said Deverick J. Anderson, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. “This study shows we need to be 100 percent diligent about infection control strategies.” To prevent spread of these bugs, he notes three components are especially important: hand washing after all patient encounters; using disposable gloves and gowns when treating patients with specific infections, and meticulous and regular cleaning of patients’ rooms.

Researchers set out to learn more about the spread of bacteria leading to hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) by focusing on the triangle of transmission in the hospital: patient, environment (room) and nurse. HAIs affect one in 25 hospitalized patients on any given day, and almost half of HAIs occur in the ICU, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The study, funded by CDC, included 167 patients who received care from 40 nurses during three separate 12-hour ICU shifts, for a total of 120 individual shifts. All nurses cared for two or more patients per shift and used new scrubs for each shift. Researchers took samples (cultures) twice a day from the nurses’ scrubs, patients and the patients’ rooms and found 22 (18 percent) transmissions of the same strain of bacteria, confirmed by microbiological and molecular analysis. Of those transmissions: 6 (27 percent) were from patient to nurse, 6 (27 percent) were from were from the room to the nurse and 10 (45 percent) were from patient to the room. The types of bacteria transmitted were: 7 methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), 5 MRSA, 3 Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (SM), 3 Acinetobacter baumaniicomplex (ABC), 2 Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP) and 2 Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PS).

Researchers cultured the sleeves, pockets and midriff of the nurses’ scrubs and found the pockets and sleeves were most likely to be contaminated. They cultured the supply cart, bed and bed rails and found the latter most likely to be contaminated.

The researchers did not identify any bugs that had spread from nurses to patients, but note that it likely occurs in hospitals. “We think it’s more common than not that these bugs spread to patients in hospitals because of temporary contamination of healthcare workers,” said Dr. Anderson.

He said that they found the bacteria in the room no matter when they took the cultures, even though the rooms were cleaned daily. That suggests cleaning of the room while the patient is still there may not be as meticulous as it is after a patient is discharged, and that needs to change, he said.

Source: Eurekalert

IFCC’s Forthcoming Congresses – October Issue

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Calendar of IFCC Congresses/Conferences and Regional Federation’s Congresses

 26 – 29, 2016 14th Asia-Pacific Federation for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine Congress Taipei, TW
Jun 11 – 15, 2017 IFCC-EFLM EuroMedLab 2017 Athens, GR
Sep 17 – 22, 2017 XXIII COLABLIOCLI Congress 2017 and XI Uruguayan Congress of Clinical Biochemistry Punta del Este, UY
 

Oct 20 – 22, 2017

 

XIV International Congress of Pediatric Laboratory Medicine

 Durban, ZA
Oct 22 – 25, 2017 XXIII IFCC WorldLab 2017 Durban, ZA
May 18 – 23, 2019 IFCC-EFLM EuroMedLab 2019 Barcelona, ES
May 24 – 28, 2020 XXIV IFCC WorldLab 2020 Seoul Seoul, KR

Calendar of events with IFCC auspices

May 09 – Dec 09 , 2016 Course Quality Management and Good Laboratory Practice, Third Edition, 2015 PAHO/WHO online course
Oct 26 – 28, 2016 IFCC Flow Cytometry Workshop “From Science to Clinic” St. Petersburg, RU
Oct 26 – 28, 2016 LMCE 2016 & KSLM 57th Annual Meeting Seoul, KR
Nov 02 – 05, 2016 TBS Biochemistry Days – Sivas 2016 Sivas, TR
Nov 04 – 07, 2016 XVI Congreso Internacional del Colegio Nacional de Bacteriologia Bogotà, CO
Nov 09 – 11, 2016 EFLM Course “Developing medical tests that improve patient outcomes” Leiden, NL
Nov 11 – 12, 2016 International Conference Clinical Biochemistry Machala, EC
Nov 17 – 18, 2016 10th International Scientific Meeting of the Centre of Metrological Traceability in Laboratory Medicine (CIRME) “Ten years after” Milan, IT
Dec 01, 2016 Colloque Biologie Médicale Paris, FR
Dec 02 – 03, 2016 Journée de Biologie Praticienne 50 Paris, FR
Feb 09 – 10, 2017 International Congress on Quality in Laboratory Medicine Helsinki, FI
Mar 24 – 25, 2017 4th EFLM-BD European Conference on Preanalytical Phase”Improving quality in the preanalytical phase through innovation” Amsterdam, NL
May 11 – 13, 2017 The VIII Baltic Transfusion Medicine Congress and the I Latvian Congress in Laboratory Medicine Riga, LV
Jun 10 – 11, 2017 EuroMedLab Athens 2017 Satellite Meeting “Management of Inborn Errors of Metabolism: from Diagnosis to Treatment” Athens, GR
Jun 10, 2017 EuroMedLab Athens 2017 Satellite Meeting “Metabolic Bone Disease: The Role of the Clinical Laboratory” Athens, GR
Jun 15 – 16, 2017 EuroMedLab Athens 2017 Satellite Meeting “Diabetes” Athens, GR
Sep 21 – 22, 2017 13th EFLM Symposium for Balkan Region Belgrade, SRB

EuroMedLab News: 4th Issue

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It is the periodical newsletter that will give you the latest information about the EUROMEDLAB Athens 2017 Congress and about Athens.

EuroMedLab news is issued periodically to report on developments in scientific program and organization of the Congress. EuroMedLab news is a handy tool to get in touch with Athens and the forthcoming Congress in real time.

In order to download the issue (.pdf), please link here.

www.athens2017.org

Psychobiotics – The Influence of the Gut Microbiome on our Mind

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Psychobiotics is a relatively new term that describes organisms that produce a mental health benefit when sufficiently ingested by a patient with a psychiatric illness. The gut-brain connection has only begun to be studied in the past decade or so; after all, the microbiome itself has only recently been studied to an intensive degree.

Studies performed in mice have demonstrated improved response to stress, enhanced immune function, and memory and learning advantages, all conferred from the receipt of the proper strain of bacteria. Studies done with human subjects have been far more challenging to understand, not only because of the self-reporting that is common to the studies and small numbers of patients, but also because of physiological shifts in inflammation and reduced corticol levels.

“Those studies give us confidence that gut bacteria are playing a causal role in very important biological processes, which we can then hope to exploit with psychobiotics,” explained the lead author of the review, Philip Burnet, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. “We’re now on the search for mechanisms, mainly in animal models. The human studies are provocative and exciting, but ultimately, most have small sample sizes, so their replicability is difficult to estimate at present. As they say, we’re ‘cautiously optimistic.'”

It’s likely that the nervous system of the gut, the immune system, and vagus nerve are crucial parts of the bacteria-gut-brain-axis, potentially working with hormones and neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. It remains to be seen, however, whether psychobiotics could be worthwhile therapies for psychological disorders, or if they could improve brain function. Studies have not yet conclusively indicated any mental health benefit from probiotic ingestion. Probiotics, however, aren’t the only players.

Prebiotics (nutrition for gut bacteria) are another channel to alter gut bacteria,” Burnet said. “We call for an even further widening of the definition of ‘psychobiotics’ to include drugs such as antidepressants and antipsychotics, and activities such as exercise and eating, because of their effects on gut bacteria.”

Consumers should exercise a healthy degree of skepticism when evaluating any product that claims to have psychobiotic effects.

Psychobiotics are a long way from their true translational potential. It’s a little boring to say that we need more studies, but that is always the case in any academic discipline,” Burnet commented. “The technology and resources already exist for such investigations, so though we are enthusiastic, the enthusiasm needs to be tempered and channeled toward answering the core mechanistic questions.”

Source: LabRoots

22nd Congress of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists

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EAHP is pleased to invite you to the 22nd Congress of the EAHP, 22-24 March 2017, in Cannes, with the theme of “Hospital pharmacists – catalysts for change”.

The scientific programme is relevant for you as a hospital pharmacist dealing with the challenge of rapid change in healthcare. The hospital pharmacist’s role in facilitating change will be addressed. EAHP’s annual congress is the largest congress for hospital pharmacy in Europe and attracts pharmacists from all over the world. The EAHP Congress continues to provide you with an exceptional opportunity to meet, network and share expertise and best practice with colleagues while keeping up to date with the latest developments in hospital pharmacy and learning about the latest products and innovations.

Click here to access the 22nd EAHP Congress programme

Venue: 

  • Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes
  • Boulevard de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes. France

More Information

No more information is available on infobioquimica.org. For further requests, you can contact the organizers of the event.

14th APFCB Congress

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The 14th Asia–Pacific  Federation for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine Congress in will be held inTaiwan in 2016. It is the first time such a great event to be hosted by the Chinese Association for Clinical Biochemistry (CACB) in Taiwan.

The theme of the congress is “Advancing laboratory medicine for better patient care”. This promises to be an excellent congress with a nice blend of cutting-edge science, a good corporate exhibition and excellent opportunities for participants to network with each other during the main congress and social events.

Click here to download the Congress Program.

Online Registration: apfcb2016.aoetek.com

More information

No more information is available on infobioquimica.org. For further requests, you can contact the organizers of the event.

APFCB News 2016

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Contents

  • From the desk of Chief Editor – Praveen Sharma
  • Message from APFCB President – Leslie Charles Lai

APFCB Activities

  • AACC approached APFCB for symposia – Tony Badrick
  • Report from the EFLM-UEMS conference 2016 – Ronda Greaves

Member Societies

  • Australasian Association of Clinical Biochemists (AACB)
  • Indonesian association of clinical chemistry (IACC)
  • Hon Kong Society of Clinical Chemistry (HKSCC)
  • Singapore Association of Clinical Biochemists (SACB)

Features

  • Scientific article: Vitamin B12 Deficiency: Active B12 Assay – M Saleem

Click here to download the APFCB News 2016/2

Troponin Testing Reality Check

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Two studies on the accuracy of high-sensitivity and conventional cardiac troponin assays published in Clinical Biochemistry demonstrate what clinical laboratorians have long known: sometimes, despite the best efforts of labs, cardiac troponin results are wrong, leading to missed or inaccurate diagnoses.

In one study, researchers evaluated the utility of a single high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) measurement in 413 patients who arrived in the emergency department with symptoms of myocardial infarction (MI). Despite excellent precision of 11.7% at the limit of detection (LoD) of 5 ng/L used to rule out MI, two of the 71 MIs that occurred had hs-cTnT concentrations <5 ng/L. The authors concluded that a single measurement of hs-cTnT < 5 ng/L is “not enough to rule out safely (non-ST-elevation MI) for very early presenters.

In an accompanying editorial, Peter A. Kavsak, PhD, FCACB, FACB, FCCS, from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; Amy K. Saenger, PhD, DABCC, from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and Peter E. Hickman, MB, from the Australian National University in Canberra, highlighted possible reasons for the findings. These included divergent results depending on the reagent lot of cardiac troponin; the considerable variation of the assay at the low analytical range end that occurs within and across different platforms; and pre-analytical factors including mild hemolysis, and the tube and specimen type.

In the second study, researchers found that endogenous alkaline phosphatase (ALP) causes a higher result for cardiac troponin I (cTnI) in assays that use ALP as a label to generate light in the chemiluminescent immunoassay method. They suggest that the liver isoform of ALP is to blame and that the assay may deliver inaccurate results in hepatobiliary patients.

“How can one reconcile the fact that erroneous cardiac troponin results will occur and the laboratory cannot prevent them all?” Kavsak, Saenger, and Hickman asked. To avoid missed or inaccurate diagnoses, they wrote, clinicians should not rely entirely on cardiac troponin levels for diagnosis. cTn results

The editorialists continued, “Laboratory professionals need to have a continuous, ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders, as timely communication is vital for proper interpretation of all laboratory results (even the inaccurate ones).”

Source: AACC

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