Purpose: The aim of this study was to present the signs, symptoms, management, and outcome of a series of cases of cluster endophthalmitis caused by a multi-drug resistant fungus, Trichosporon. ...Methods: This was a retrospective, non-randomized, consecutive interventional case series. Ten cases of postoperative endophthalmitis operated by a surgeon on three consecutive operation theater (OT) days presented 3-5 months after their surgery. All cases were microbiologically confirmed. The pathogen was found to be resistant to most antifungals, including amphotericin B. The cases had a latent period of around 45 days. Management of endophthalmitis included intravitreal injections, anterior chamber (AC) lavage, Pars Plana vitrectomy (PPV), posterior capsulotomy, IOL, and capsular bag removal. Multiple intravitreal injections were required due to recurrence of infections after initial improvement with voriconazole injections. Results: Structural integrity was maintained and infection-free status was achieved in all the eyes. The presenting vision ranged from 6/60 to PL (perception of light). Seven out of 10 had improvement in their final vision over the presenting vision. Final outcome of four patients had vision of 6/24 or better, 4 patients had vision in the range of 2/60 to 6/36 and 2 patients had PL. Conclusion: Trichosporon can cause devasting infections even in the immunocompetent, especially in association with implants and catheters. Triazoles form the mainstay of treatment of Trichosporon infection due to the high susceptibility of the organism in vitro. A regimen including voriconazole and amphotericin B may prove to be the most effective. This is the first report of an outbreak of cluster endophthalmitis caused by Trichosporon.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In general, 4 amino-5-methylamino-2′,7′-difluorescein diacetate (DAF-FM-DA) dye is used to detect nitric oxide in biological systems through cell imaging. In this study, we have used 96 well plate ...format to quantify nitric oxide using DAF-FM-DA through a multimode reader (or independently using fluorospectrometer) and could be visualized in a fluorescence microscope. Similar study otherwise will require a high-end instrument. The method has been validated to screen NOS inhibitors in the HEK 293T cell lines over-expressing the NOS isoforms. We observed that the method is very simple to use, adaptive, sensitive and most importantly it saves time.
Ethanol (70% v/v in distilled water), Nω-Nitro-l-arginine (l-NAME), 7-Nitro-Indazole (7-NI) (Sigma, St. Louis, MO), HEK 293T cell lines (National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune, India), DMEM (Himedia laboratories Pvt), Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA), 100 U/mL penicillin, and 0.1 mg/mL streptomycin in a 5% CO2 atmosphere. Hank's Balanced Salt Solution (HBSS) without Phenol Red of pH 7.4 was prepared with the following composition: NaCl, 8.0g, KCl, 0.4g, CaCl2, 0.14g, MgSO4⋅7H2O, 0.1g, MgCl2·6H2O, 0.1g, Na2HPO4·2H2O, 0.06g, KH2PO4, 0.06g, glucose, 1.0g, NaHCO3, 0.35g, H2O, to 1000 ml, Sterilized and refrigerated, Calcium Ionophore A23187 (Sigma Aldrich 52665-69-7) DAF-FM Di Acetate (Molecular Probes Life Technologies), and DAF-FM Di Aceatate was prepared as a stock solution (5 mM) in DMSO, divided into aliquots and stored at −20 °C, followed by dilution to the required concentration in HBSS buffer before use.
Neubauer chamber, Microtube centrifuges (1.5 mL), Micropipettors,10,100, and 1000 mL with corresponding tips, multimode reader (Tecan, Synergy-HT), inverted fluorescence microscope (Nikon, eclipse Ti-S), black flat bottom Microplates (96-well) (Corning 3603).
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•A simple, sensitive and adaptive cell-based protocol that requires a microplate reader screen the potential NOS inhibitors.•Enhanced quantum fluorescence of DAF-FM-DA with intracellular NO improves its sensitivity and enzyme activity.•This cell-based assay provides better insight into the bioavailability and inhibitory activity of the potential compounds.
Advances in high-throughput techniques lead to evolving a large number of unknown protein sequences (UPS). Functional characterization of UPS is significant for the investigation of disease symptoms ...and drug repositioning. Protein subcellular localization is imperative for the functional characterization of protein sequences. Diverse techniques are used on protein sequences for feature extraction. However, many times a single feature extraction technique leads to poor prediction performance. In this paper, two feature augmentations are described through sequence induced, physicochemical, and evolutionary information of the amino acid residues. While augmented features preserve the sequence-order-information and protein-residue-properties. Two bacterial protein datasets Gram-Positive (G +) and Gram-Negative (G-) are utilized for the experimental work. After performing essential preprocessing on protein datasets, two sets of feature vectors are obtained. These feature vectors are used separately to train the different individual and ensembles such as decision tree (C 4.5), k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), multi-layer perceptron (MLP), Naïve Bayes (NB), support vector machine (SVM), AdaBoost, gradient boosting machine (GBM), and random forest (RF) with fivefold cross-validation. Prediction results of the model demonstrate that overall accuracy reported by C4.5 is highest 99.57% on G + and 97.47% on G- datasets with known protein sequences. Similarly, for the UPS overall accuracy of G + is 85.17% with SVM and 82.45% with G- dataset using MLP.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the product disposition strategies in reverse supply chains and to develop a framework to prioritize these strategies for effective reverse supply ...chain implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
The disposition strategies, based on the literature review, were selected, and the fuzzy TOPSIS methodology had been applied for the prioritization of these disposition strategies. A case of cell phone manufacturing firm is discussed for the illustration and validation of the methodology. Three respondents from the firm helped in exploring the disposition strategies and data collection of the firm.
Findings
The results of the study show that dissemble and recycle is the most preferred disposition strategy for the firm. Redistribution of returned products after their refurbishing is second most prioritized disposition strategy. Landfill and incineration of cell phones is the last and least preferred option for the firm.
Research limitations/implications
The study will provide useful guidance to the firm for disposition decision making of cell phones returned to the firm. It will help academicians and practitioners for evaluating, improving, and benchmarking the disposition strategies for the disposition of returned cell phones. One of the limitations of the study is that it only considers the single case of manufacturing firm. In future, more case studies may be carried out for generalization of the results.
Originality/value
It is evident from the literature review that there are very few studies on disposition decisions in reverse supply chain. Also, disposition strategies for cell phones are first time being explored and prioritized. Hence, this study can be viewed as an attempt to increase the level of awareness on reverse supply chain issues.