UNLABELLED Several experiments suggest that in the chronic phase of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection, CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) contribute very little to the death of productively infected cells. First, the expected life span of productively infected cells is fairly long, i.e., about 1 day. Second, this life span is hardly affected by the depletion of CD8(+) T ce...

Killing rates of fluoroquinolones, beta-lactams, and vancomycin were compared against Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus aureus, pneumococci, streptococci, and Enterococcus faecalis. The times required for fluoroquinolones to decrease viability by 3 log(10) were 1.5 h for Enterobacteriaceae, 4 to 6 h for staphylococci, and >/=6 h for streptococci and enterococci. Thus, the rate of killing by fl...

Quantitative modeling of combination therapy can describe the effects of each antibiotic against multiple bacterial populations. Our aim was to develop an efficient experimental and modeling strategy that evaluates different synergy mechanisms using a rapidly killing peptide antibiotic (nisin) combined with amikacin or linezolid as probe drugs. Serial viable counts over 48 h were obtained in ti...

The role of serum factors in the intracellular killing of bacteria by monocytes was studied on the basis of an assay independent of phagocytosis. After 3 min of phagocytosis of preopsonized bacteria and removal of noningested bacteria, the monocytes containing bacteria are reincubated for various periods and the number of unkilled bacteria is determined by a microbiological method after lysis o...

Koutras has proposed some methods to construct reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors (which are, in general, irreducible) when a pair of orthogonal conformal Killing vectors exist in a given space. We give the completely general result demonstrating that this severe restriction of orthogonality is unnecessary. In addition we correct and extend some results concerning Ki...

The determinants of the lung clearance of Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus were studied in normal mice after exposure to an aerosol of viable bacteria and 99mTc-labeled dead bacteria. The fraction of bacteria in lungs that remained viable 4 h after exposure were: S. pneumoniae, 7.3%; K. pneumoniae, 121%; E. coli, 88.5%; S. aureus, 27.6...

Eosinophils participate in allergic inflammation and may have roles in the body's defense against helminthic infestation. Even under noninflammatory conditions, eosinophils are present in the mucosa of the large intestine, where large numbers of gram-negative bacteria reside. Therefore, roles for eosinophils in host defenses against bacterial invasion are possible. In a system for bacterial via...

PURPOSE To investigate whether optimized photoactivated chromophore for keratitis-corneal collagen cross-linking (PACK-CXL) treatment settings allow accelerating treatment while maintaining antibacterial efficacy. METHODS Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains were irradiated with ultraviolet-A light of equal fluence but different intensity settings (18 mW/cm² for 5 minutes ...

The in vitro activity of combinations of penicillin and netilimicin was determined against 20 clinical isolates of enterococci and compared with that obtained in simultaneous tests with penicillin/sisomicin, penicillin/streptomycin, and penicillin/kanamycin. Synergy between the two drugs in each combination was determined by the use of quantitative kill curves and was defined as a killing by th...