Many hospital antimicrobial stewardship programs restrict the availability of selected drugs by requiring prior approval. Carbapenems may be among the restricted drugs, but it is unclear if hospitals that restrict availability actually use fewer carbapenems than hospitals that do not restrict use. Nor is it clear if restriction is related to resistance. We evaluated the relationship between car...

BACKGROUND Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) recently have emerged as a nosocomial pathogen among dialysis patients. This study aims to appraise the prevalence, incidence density and risk factors for VRE colonization among these patients. METHODS In this prospective study, 782 stool or rectal swab specimens were collected from 250 chronic hemodialysis patients with an interval of at leas...

Five chromogenic agars, evaluated using 400 stool specimens, were found to be superior in sensitivity (range, 89.9 to 93.9%) to bile esculin azide agar with vancomycin (BEAV) agar (84.8%) for detecting vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and the results were available 24 to 48 h sooner. The time to detection, need for supplemental testing, color distinction, and breakthrough of non-VRE orga...

We welcome the call by Zachariah et al. for a move towards more patient-centred terminology in tuberculosis (TB) care.1 We suggest, however, that the changes proposed do not go far enough. In paral lel with terminology used in the world of the human immuno defi ciency virus, we propose replacing the phrase ‘TB patient’ by ‘person with TB’. ‘TB patient’ puts emphasis on the disease, but it is im...

An Escherichia coli K-12 mutant deficient for detergent-resistant (DR) phospholipase A, a principal enzyme catalyzing the first step in phospholipid degradation, was characterized genetically. The mutation was found to affect the locus pldA (phospholipid degradation), which is cotransducible both with ilv and metE at a frequencies of 13 and 78%, respectively, and shown to lie between the ilv an...

We compared trends of annual resistance rates calculated from results for all isolates and for the first isolate of Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Acinetobacter baumannii per patient over a 3-year period from 2001 through 2003. Antimicrobial susceptibility results of inpatients were extracted from a computerized database. Annual resistance rates of a species were calculated b...

Loss-of-function mutations in the phosphate regulating gene with homologies to endopeptidases on the X-chromosome (PHEX) have been causally associated with X-linked hypophosphatemic rickets (XLHR). The early diagnosis of XLHR in infants is challenging when it is based solely on clinical features and biochemical findings. We report a 7-month-old boy with a family history of hypophosphatemic rick...

We surveyed environmental surfaces in our clinical microbiology laboratory to determine the prevalence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and multidrug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (MDRE) during a routine working day. From a total of 193 surfaces, VRE were present on 20 (10%) and MDRE were present on 4 (2%) of the surfaces tested. In a subsequent survey after routine cleaning, all of the...