Microbial biofilms has remained a major complication of tracheal intubation in patients requiring ventilator equipment. The aim of this study was to characterize bacterial and fungal biofilms in endotracheal tubes from intensive care unit (ICU) patients in Ahwaz, Iran. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, patients admitted to ICU that required mechanical ventilation for at least 24 hours ...

Over the last 50 years or so, amphotericin has been widely employed in treating life-threatening systemic fungal infections. Its usefulness in the clinic, however, has always been circumscribed by its dose-limiting side-effects, and it is also now compromised by an increasing incidence of pathogen resistance. Combating these problems through development of new anti-fungal agents requires detail...

A major global concern is the emergence and spread of systemic life-threatening fungal infections in critically ill patients. The increase in invasive fungal infections, caused most commonly by Candida and Aspergillus species, occurs in patients with impaired defenses due to a number of reasons such as underlying disease, the use of chemotherapeutic and immunosuppressive agents, broad-spectrum ...

Fungi are a large group of eukaryotes found in nearly all ecosystems. More than 250 fungal genomes have already been sequenced, greatly improving our understanding of fungal evolution, physiology, and development. However, for the Pezizomycetes, an early-diverging lineage of filamentous ascomycetes, there is so far only one genome available, namely that of the black truffle, Tuber melanosporum,...

fungal involvement of the paranasal sinuses is frequently observed in the immunocompromised host and it can become lifethreatening if it is not diagnosed. definitive diagnosis is made by tissue biopsy and culture. in this study biopsy materials of maxillary, ethmoidal and frontal sinuses of 60 patients with clinical manifestation of sinusitis and no response to medical therapy were assessed by ...

asthma is a global problem that affects over 300 million people in the world. the main reason of asthma is allergy and atopy. asthmatic patients are sensitized to allergens that can be resulting asthma attacks. fungi as an allergen can be sensitized atopic people and present a severe asthma. fungi have been found in water-damaged homes of asthmatic patients. allergic asthma is associated with e...

Culturing of microbes for food production, called cultivation mutualism, has been well-documented from eusocial and subsocial insects such as ants, termites and ambrosia beetles, but poorly described from solitary, non-social insects. Here we report a fungal farming in a non-social lizard beetle Doubledaya bucculenta (Coleoptera: Erotylidae: Languriinae), which entails development of a special ...

Vaccines against fungal diseases are gaining attention because of their growing impact on modern medicine. Development of these vaccines should incorporate immunological tools that integrate with or replace chemotherapy to minimize antibiotic use and consequent resistance. In this review, we evaluate the current developmental status of fungal vaccines against coccidioidomycosis. There is a need...

ABSTRACT The germination of field-collected pseudosclerotia and the development of apothecia from eight New Jersey populations of the mummy berry fungus Monilinia vaccinii-corymbosi were evaluated under controlled conditions in the greenhouse. Development data for apothecia were used to describe the timing of apothecium formation and to estimate broad- and narrow-sense heritabilities of fungal ...

Cryptococcus neoformans is a major fungal pathogen that disseminates to the central nervous system (CNS) to cause fatal meningoencephalitis, but little is known about immune responses within this immune-privileged site. CD4+ T cells have demonstrated roles in anticryptococcal defenses, but increasing evidence suggests that they may contribute to clinical deterioration and pathology in both HIV-...