The hemagglutination (HA) activity of two strains of Escherichia coli, each possessing different colonization factor antigens (CFA), was examined under different test conditions. The effects of ionic strength, temperature, pH, cations, and reaction surface on erythrocyte (RBC) agglutination were analyzed. Strain H-10407 (CFA/I) caused the agglutination of human, bovine, and chicken RBC, whereas...

BACKGROUND Staphylococcus epidermidis orthopedic device infections are caused by direct inoculation of commensal flora during surgery and remain rare, although S. epidermidis carriage is likely universal. We wondered whether S. epidermidis orthopedic device infection strains might constitute a sub-population of commensal isolates with specific virulence ability. Biofilm formation and invasion o...

Toxigenic Clostridium difficile is isolated from a majority of healthy human infants. The exact mechanism of asymptomatic colonisation is unclear; however, previous studies in this laboratory have shown that components of both the immunoglobulin and non-immunoglobulin fractions of human milk bind to toxin A and prevent its interaction with hamster intestinal brush border membranes (BBMs). Secre...

BACKGROUND Urinary Candida infections in the hospital environment are frequent and need to be better understood. AIMS To compare the results of antifungal susceptibility profiles of yeasts isolated from patients with urinary infections obtained by broth microdilution method (BM) and by disk diffusion (DD), and also evaluate the capacity of these yeasts to form biofilms. METHODS Only yeasts ...

BACKGROUND Circulating prostate cells can be detected with a reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) assay for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) mRNA. We have developed a new quantitative RT-PCR method for measuring PSA mRNA. METHODS The method uses a PSA-like internal standard (IS) mRNA that is added into the sample at the beginning of the RNA extraction and coamplified by RT-PCR with the PSA in th...

Antifungal agents may differ in their fungicidal activities against Aspergillus spp. In order to compare the fungicidal activities of voriconazole and amphotericin B against 40 isolates of Aspergillus fumigatus, A. flavus, and A. terreus, we developed a new microbroth colorimetric method for assessing fungicidal activities and determining minimal fungicidal concentrations (MFCs). This methodolo...

BACKGROUND Sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is one of the most frequently employed assays for clinical diagnosis, since this enables the investigator to identify specific protein biomarkers. However, the conventional assay using a 96-well microtitration plate is time- and sample-consuming, and therefore is not suitable for rapid diagnosis. To overcome these drawbacks, we perfo...

The changes in the immunological properties of apolipoprotein AI (apo-AI) and AII (apo-AII) during the oxidation of the high-density lipoprotein HDL3 and its influence on the binding of heavily oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) to type I and III collagen were investigated. Oxidation of HDL3 or Eu3+-labelled HDL3 was performed with CuSO4, varying the time of oxidation. Oxidation of HDL3 res...

Rapid assays for Escherichia coli were developed by using the compound 4-methylumbelliferone glucuronide (MUG), which is hydrolyzed by glucuronidase to yield a fluorogenic product. The production of glucuronidase was limited to strains of E. coli and some Salmonella and Shigella strains in the family Enterobacteriaceae. For immediate confirmation of the presence of E. coli in most-probable-numb...

Two new oligosaccharides were prepared from heparin by its partial depolymerization using heparin lyase I (EC 4.2.2.7) in an attempt to prepare oligosaccharides having intact antithrombin III binding sites. The oligosaccharides were purified by chromatography on the basis of both size and charge and demonstrated a high level of purity by capillary electrophoresis. One- and two-dimensional 1H NM...