Monitoring of serotypes and their clonal associations is critical as pneumococci adapt to the selective pressures exerted by the pneumococcal seven-valent conjugate vaccine (PCV7). We genotyped 1,476 invasive isolates from the Active Bacterial Core surveillance (705 [89.8%] of the isolates were obtained from children <5 years of age, and 771 [18.4%] of the isolates were obtained from individual...

Binding and transport of polymeric Igs (pIgA and IgM) across epithelia is mediated by the polymeric Ig receptor (pIgR), which is expressed on the basolateral surface of secretory epithelial cells. Although an Fc receptor for IgA (FcalphaR) has been identified on myeloid cells and some cultured mesangial cells, the expression of an FcalphaR on epithelial cells has not been described. In this stu...

The 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV10) has been included in Bulgarian Childhood Immunization Program since 2010. This study aimed to assess serotype distribution and antimicrobial resistance of 198 invasive and non-invasive Streptococcus pneumoniae strains that had been isolated in Bulgaria during 2011-2016 from patients with invasive (IPD) and non-invasive (NIPD) pneumococcal dis...

Tn501 random mutagenesis was applied to the Pseudomonas aeruginosa wild-type strain PAO1 to select for mutants hypersusceptible to aminoglycoside antimicrobial agents. One such mutant, called 19A, was found to be hypersusceptible to a wide range of antibiotics including aminoglycosides, beta-lactams, fluoroquinolones, colistin, erythromycin, rifampin, and glycopeptides. Light microscopy of the ...

In Japan, the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) was introduced in 2010. To assess the effects of PCV7 on invasive pneumococcal infection in children, a population-based prospective survey has been conducted in 10 prefectures. As a part of the study, blood and nasopharyngeal isolates from children admitted to the Shibata Hospital, Niigata Prefecture, were analyzed for determining th...

Circulating microRNAs are deregulated in liver fibrosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and are candidate biomarkers. This study investigated the potential of serum microRNAs; miR-19a, miR-296, miR-130a, miR-195, miR-192, miR-34a, and miR-146a as early diagnostic biomarkers for hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related HCC. As how these microRNAs change during liver fibrosis progression is not clear, ...

BACKGROUND Pneumococcal diseases remain a leading cause of vaccine-preventable death worldwide in children <5 years of age. The seven-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) was approved in 2001 in Europe and was introduced into the national immunization programmes of many European countries from 2006-2008. In 2009, higher-valent PCVs (PCV10 and PCV13) became available, replacing PCV7 from...

We recently demonstrated that the Escherichia coli ribosome is robust enough to accommodate foreign 16S rRNAs from diverse gamma- and betaproteobacteria bacteria (Kitahara et al., 2012). Therein, we used the common universal primers Bac8f and UN1541r to obtain a nearly full-length gene. However, we noticed that these primers overlap variable sites at 19[A/C] and 1527[U/C] in Bac8f and UN1541r, ...

The pathogenesis of nasal polyp is to be further investigated. Micro RNA (miR) plays a role in the development of allergic inflammation. Interleukin (IL)-10-producing dendritic cells (DC) have immune tolerogenic properties. This study test a hypothesis that miR-17-92 cluster is associated with suppressing IL-10 in peripheral DC. In this study, peripheral blood samples were obtained from 26 pati...

OBJECTIVE The serotypes and patterns of antibiotic resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae) strains that cause invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in infants were analyzed to provide guidance for clinical disease prevention and treatment. METHODS The clinical features of confirmed IPD were evaluated in 61 patients, less than 5 years of age, who were admitted to our hospital betw...