Infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is assumed to be caused by a single strain, and several MTB strains within the same patient are rarely considered. The present study analyzes the phenomenon of mixed infections by MTB in a group of 50 patients with both respiratory and extrarespiratory tuberculosis. First, the proportion of patients with infection by >1 strain was defined, and secon...

Transmission of antibiotic resistance genes may be mediated by a variety of molecular mechanisms, from mobility of small genetic elements to clonal spread. Since 1997, the carbapenem-hydrolyzing enzyme Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) has spread in the United States and across the world, mainly via a single K. pneumoniae clone, sequence type 258. By tracking the trail of dissemination ...

BACKGROUND Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most common nosocomial pathogens which can cause a broad spectrum of infections. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to describe the frequency and antibiotic susceptibility patterns of clonal groups of gentamicin-resistant strains of MRSA isolated from a tertiary care hospital in Tehran, Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS A...

Recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) have enabled the quantitation of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) encoding the clonal rearranged V(D)J immunoglobulin locus. We aimed to evaluate the clonal heterogeneity of follicular lymphoma (FL) in the tumour and the plasma at diagnosis and to assess the prognostic value of the ctDNA level. Plasma samples at diagnosis were available for 34 p...

This study presents a comprehensive approach of a clonal diversity analysis of 448 Extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing E. coli isolated from environmental, human and food samples in Spain. The phenotypic confirmation of ESBL production was performed by disc diffusion and microdilution methods, while Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and sequencing were used for the molecular characteri...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the occurrence and dissemination of acquired carbapenem-hydrolysing class D beta-lactamase (class D carbapenemase)- and metallo-beta-lactamase (MBL)-encoding genes among Acinetobacter spp. isolates recovered from medical centres in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. METHODS During 2006-07, 41 medical centres located in 10 countries in the APAC reg...

Patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are prone to be colonized and infected by multi-resistant bacteria. It is previously known that nosocomial infections are often preceded by cross-transmission events. The aim of the present investigation was to study the impact of the patient's length of ICU stay on the resistance patterns, diversity and dissemination of coagulase-negative staphylococci...