Tolerance to infections is the ability of a host to limit the impact of a given pathogen burden on host performance. This simulation study demonstrated the merit of using random regressions to estimate unbiased genetic variances for tolerance slope and its genetic correlations with other traits, which could not be obtained using the previously implemented statistical methods. Genetic variance i...

Understanding pathogen infectivity and virulence requires combining insights from epidemiology, ecology, evolution and genetics. Although theoretical work in these fields has identified population structure as important for pathogen life-history evolution, experimental tests are scarce. Here, we explore the impact of population structure on life-history evolution in phage T4, a viral pathogen o...

Forest-insect systems frequently show cyclic dynamics which has been of considerable interest to both experimental and theoretical ecologists. One important issue has been the manner in which density-dependence acting on the host population through resource competition influences the likelihood of population cycles. Existing models make contradictory predictions. Here, we explore two models tha...

BACKGROUND Carbapenem-resistant (CR) Gram-negative pathogens are recognized as a major health concern. This study examined the prevalence of infections due to 4 CR Gram-negative species (Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Escherichia coli) in the United States and assessed their impact on hospital stays and mortality. METHODS Hospitalized patients with...

Abstract Background Aerococcus species are Gram-positive cocci, with negative catalase and oxidase activities growth characteristics similar to viridans streptococci. They rarely cause infection in humans. However, there reports of bacteremia, meningitis, septic arthritis, endocarditis due this pathogen the literature. Herein we report a rare case pyelonephritis A. viridans. Case presentation A...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE There is growing clinical and experimental evidence that infections with Chlamydia pneumoniae might contribute to the development and progression of atherosclerosis. However, studies detecting the pathogen in atherosclerotic lesions examined either only atherosclerotic vessels or control vessels without atherosclerosis obtained from a different group of individuals. We an...

Rhizobium radiobacter is an aerobic, gram negative, rod-shaped, bacterium typically found in the soil. Commonly a plant pathogen, it is also a rare human pathogen causing serious disease. Risk factors for infection include neutropenia, leukopenia, catheters, hospitalization, and low CD4+ lymphocyte count, especially in patients with malignancy or human immunodeficiency virus. There is currently...

The Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen, Klebsiella pneumoniae, is responsible for causing a spectrum of community-acquired and nosocomial infections and typically infects patients with indwelling medical devices, especially urinary catheters, on which this microorganism is able to grow as a biofilm. The increasingly frequent acquisition of antibiotic resistance by K. pneumoniae strains has gi...

Staphylococcus aureus is a significant human pathogen responsible for a range of diseases including pneumonia, sepsis, skin, and soft tissue infections. An important component of its success as a human pathogen is the production of a large array of virulence factors including several toxins. In this issue of EMBO Reports, Reyes-Robles and colleagues [1] identify a glycine-rich motif shared by b...