OBJECTIVES To determine the rate of Staphylococcus aureus faecal carriage in 101 wild small mammals in Spain and to characterize the isolates obtained. METHODS Faecal samples were seeded on mannitol salt agar and ORSAB plates. The presence of the resistance genes mecA, mecC and blaZ and the new blaZ allotype associated with staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) XI (blaZ-SCCmecXI) wa...

Staphylococcus aureus is the leading etiologic agent of orthopedic implant infections. Here a ribocluster of 27 S. aureus strains underwent further molecular characterization and subtyping by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and spa-typing. This cluster had been detected by automated ribotyping (with the EcoRI restriction enzyme) of 200 S. aureus isolates from periprosthetic infections of pati...

Epidemiological data on community acquired methicillin-resistant-Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) carriage and infection in the Middle-East region is scarce with only few reports in the Israeli and Palestinian populations. As part of a Palestinian-Israeli collaborative research, we have conducted a cross-sectional survey of nasal S. aureus carriage in healthy children and their parents throughou...

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is one of major health problems experienced by 80-85% patients in their lifetime. Spondyloarthritis (SpA) has become the leading causes chronic LBP but often undiagnosed. General practitioners (GP) have an essential role early diagnosis SpA. Aim: To explore knowledge GP about SpA from clinical and management elaborate on each GP’s perspective practice performance...

The use of radial arteries as an arterial bypass conduit is an invasive procedure which is becoming popular among various medical centres. The greatest risk associated with harvesting the radial artery is ischaemia of the soft tissues of the hand. In this study we dissected 200 hands derived from 100 formalin-fixed cadavers in order to identify arterial patterns that will allow safe removal of ...

Rheumatic diseases are the most common reasons of partial disability and the fourth leading reason of the full disability. The rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by synovium inflammation with subsequent joints harming. The complex RA treatment has several objectives—symptomatic relief, suppression of active inflammation, prevention of tissue damage, improvem...

Methods This study was based on data from the national antibiotic resistance surveillance (ISIS-AR) in The Netherlands. The 22 participating laboratories cover approximately 50% of all hospital beds. Data from 2008 through 2010 on S. aureus (SA) isolates were evaluated for methicillin resistance and spa-type, to identify LA-MRSA strains. Only the first isolate per patient was included. For this...

BACKGROUND: The sperm penetration assay (SPA) is used to predict the fertilizing capacity of sperm. Thus, some programs rely on SPA scores to formulate insemination plans in conjunction with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if a relationship exists between SPA scores and polyspermy rates during conventional IVF cycles. METHODS: A total of 1350 conse...

A new example of complement-mediated platelet injury has been described. Staphylococcal protein A (SPA) causes rabbit platelet injury as manifested by release of platelet 5-hydroxytryptamine (5HT). This reaction is complement-dependent and occurs over a very small range of SPA concentration, larger amounts being inhibitory. Complement fixation by SPA demonstrates the same narrow SPA concentrati...