Ecological interactions between aboveground and belowground biodiversity have received many attentions in the recent decades. Although soil biodiversity declined with the decrease of plant diversity, many previous studies found plant species identities were more important than plant diversity in controlling soil biodiversity. This study focused on the responses of soil biodiversity to the alter...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the efficacy of oral linezolid, with or without rifampicin, on valve vegetations and secondary foci of infection compared with vancomycin, in the absence or presence of rifampicin, in experimental endocarditis caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. METHODS Treatment groups were controls (n = 16), linezolid (n = 15), vancomycin (n = 15), linezolid and rif...

A 46-year-old man with a history of cigarette smoking was referred to our hospital for further evaluation of infective endocarditis. He had a history of fever of 45 days’ duration. Previously in workup for fever, the patient had undergone transthoracic echocardiography, showing vegetations on the aortic and mitral valves, hence his referral to our hospital. On physical examination, he was febri...

S ince Dillon and colleagues in 1973 described valvar vegetations by M mode echocardiography, the technique has assumed an increasingly important role in the assessment and management of endocarditis. The development of two dimensional and later transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE) has significantly improved the non-invasive detection of vegetations. Moreover, echoDoppler studies provide cli...

In the last 50 years, the incidence of infective endocarditis (IE) has remained between 2 and 6 per 100.000 individuals in the general population per year and its mortality has fluctuated between 10% and 30%, depending on the type of pathogen. Historically, chronic rheumatic heart disease had being the primary risk factor for IE but in the last years, new at-risk groups have emerged like indivi...

The correlation between antibiotic concentrations in serum, serum bactericidal activity, and results of therapy was studied in rabbits with streptococcal endocarditis. Five days of procaine penicillin G reduced bacterial titers to <10 per g in 12 of 14 vegetations in rabbits receiving 75,000 U intramuscularly every 6 h and 10 of 20 in rabbits given 37,500 U. Ten days of 18,750 U every 6 h did n...

We compared ciprofloxacin, rifampin, and gentamicin treatments, alone and in combination, for 5 days in the therapy of experimental aortic valve endocarditis in rats caused by a clinical isolate of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium. The MICs and MBCs of vancomycin, ciprofloxacin, rifampin, and gentamicin were 250 and > 1,000, 3.1 and 6.3, 0.098 and 1.6, and 12.5 and > 50 micrograms/ml, ...

Monocytes are important effector cells in the pathogenesis of bacterial endocarditis since they provide the tissue factor that activates the coagulation system and maintains established vegetations. Monocytes secrete cytokines that can modulate monocyte tissue factor activity (TFA), thereby affecting the formation and maintenance of vegetations. In this study, we show that monocytes cultured fo...

The activities of telavancin and vancomycin were compared in vitro and in the rabbit model of aortic valve endocarditis against a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strain, COL, and a vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) strain, HIP 5836. Telavancin was bactericidal in time-kill studies at a concentration of 5 microg/ml against both COL and HIP5836. Vancomycin was bacteriostatic at...

This study examines the role of the vegetation in catheter-induced experimental endocarditis in predisposing to bacterial colonization of cardiac valves and in influencing the course of the disease and response to penicillin therapy. Platelet-fibrin vegetations developed at areas of valvular trauma and were colonized when Streptococcus viridans were injected intravenously. Pretreatment with war...