Background
Oral mucositis is a common complication in pediatric cancer patients, affecting up to 80% of children. Due to neutropenia and disruption of the mucosal barrier, chemotherapy-induced oral ...mucositis is often complicated by super-infections.
Case report
A 16-years old male with stage 3 Burkitt’s lymphoma developed chemotherapy induced oral mucositis grade 3 (according to WHO scale). Ulcers were quickly growing (reaching a maximum diameter of 3 cm) and became greyish in colour, resulting in dysphagia and pain. A swab of the lesions was taken and microbiological tests were performed. The sample grew for
Raoultella planticola
, an encapsulated Gram-negative bacterium whose full pathogenic potential still needs to be defined. Treatment: The patient received antibiotic combination therapy with Amikacin and Ceftazidime for 8 days. Complete healing of the lesions and resolution of the symptoms were reached and he completed his antineoplastic therapy without further complications. Follow-up: Twelve months after the infection, he is alive and well, with no oral complaints.
Conclusion
This is the first report of a
Raoultella planticola
infection in a patient with chemotherapy induced oral mucositis. This type of infection must be added to the list of organisms to be considered when caring for these patients.
A detailed analysis is presented of the diffractive deep-inelastic scattering process ep→eXY, where Y is a proton or a low mass proton excitation carrying a fraction 1-xIP>0.95 of the incident proton ...longitudinal momentum and the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex satisfies |t|<1 GeV2. Using data taken by the H1 experiment, the cross section is measured for photon virtualities in the range 3.5≤Q2≤1600 GeV2, triple differentially in xIP, Q2 and β=x/xIP, where x is the Bjorken scaling variable. At low xIP, the data are consistent with a factorisable xIP dependence, which can be described by the exchange of an effective pomeron trajectory with intercept αIP(0)=1.118±0.008(exp.)+0.029-0.010(model). Diffractive parton distribution functions and their uncertainties are determined from a next-to-leading order DGLAP QCD analysis of the Q2 and β dependences of the cross section. The resulting gluon distribution carries an integrated fraction of around 70% of the exchanged momentum in the Q2 range studied. Total and differential cross sections are also measured for the diffractive charged current process e+p→ν̄eXY and are found to be well described by predictions based on the diffractive parton distributions. The ratio of the diffractive to the inclusive neutral current ep cross sections is studied. Over most of the kinematic range, this ratio shows no significant dependence on Q2 at fixed xIP and x or on x at fixed Q2 and β.
Eight Italian hospital or University gynecology clinics participated in a prospective survey of patients with culture-confirmed symptomatic vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) (October 1999 to March ...2001). Of 1138 patients recruited in the study, 931 were evaluable. A recent history of VVC was documented in 43.5% patients (358/823) with a mean number of 2.9±2.7 episodes per patient (
N=302). A total of 77 patients (10.0%) had a history of recurrent VVC (four and more episodes in a 12-month period). The most frequent associated factors were related to life style: synthetic fabric underwear, vaginal douching and bike, training bike and motorbike (about 1/3 each). Oral contraception was found in 20.8% patients, recent antibiotic use in 15.9% patients, current pregnancy concerned 10.3% patients while 3.4% patients were taking hormonal replacement therapy. Diabetes, corticosteroids or HIV were rarely encountered. Yeast was documented by direct microscopy in 78.3% patients (448/572). A positive culture was obtained in 98.3% patients (909/925).
Candida albicans was the predominant species (77.1%), followed by
Candida glabrata (14.6%) and
Candida krusei (4.0%). With the exception of one center with a lower proportion of
C. albicans, this latter represented between 75 and 85% of the isolates. Overall, this study confirmed the preponderant role played by
C. albicans in either sporadic and recurrent VVC
.
A measurement is presented of elastic deeply virtual Compton scattering e++p→e++γ+p at HERA using data taken with the H1 detector. The cross section is measured as a function of the photon ...virtuality, Q2, and the invariant mass, W, of the γp system, in the kinematic range 2<Q2<20GeV2, 30<W<120GeV and |t|<1GeV2, where t is the squared momentum transfer to the proton. The measurement is compared to QCD based calculations.
The inclusive e^-p single and double differential cross sections for neutral and charged current processes are measured with the H1 detector at HERA, in the range of four-momentum transfer squared ...Q^2 between 150 and 30000 GeV^2, and Bjorken x between 0.002 and 0.65. The data were taken in 1998 and 1999 with a centre-of-mass energy of 320 GeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 16.4 pb^(-1). The data are compared with recent measurements of the inclusive neutral and charged current e^+p cross sections. For Q^2 1000 GeV^2 clear evidence is observed for an asymmetry between e^+p and e^-p neutral current scattering and the generalised structure function xF_3 is extracted for the first time at HERA. A fit to the charged current data is used to extract a value for the W boson propagator mass. The data are found to be in good agreement with Standard Model predictions.
Results on diffractive photoproduction of
ψ(2
S) mesons are presented using data collected between 1996 and 2000 with the H1 detector at the HERA
ep collider. The data correspond to an integrated ...luminosity of 77 pb
−1. The energy dependence of the diffractive
ψ(2
S) cross section is found to be similar to or possibly somewhat steeper than that for
J/
ψ mesons. The dependences of the elastic and proton dissociative
ψ(2
S) photoproduction cross sections on the squared momentum transfer
t at the proton vertex are measured. The
t-dependence of the elastic channel, parametrised as
e
bt
, yields
b
el
ψ(2
S)
=(4.31±0.57±0.46) GeV
−2, compatible with that of the
J/
ψ. For the proton dissociative channel the result
b
pd
ψ(2
S)
=(0.59±0.13±0.12) GeV
−2 is 2.3 standard deviations smaller than that measured for the
J/
ψ. With proper account of the individual wavefunctions theoretical predictions based on perturbative QCD are found to describe the measurements well.
A search for the single production of doubly-charged Higgs bosons H±± in ep collisions is presented. The signal is searched for via the Higgs decays into a high mass pair of same charge leptons, one ...of them being an electron. The analysis uses up to 118 pb−1 of ep data collected by the H1 experiment at HERA. No evidence for doubly-charged Higgs production is observed and mass dependent upper limits are derived on the Yukawa couplings hel of the Higgs boson to an electron–lepton pair. Assuming that the doubly-charged Higgs only decays into an electron and a muon via a coupling of electromagnetic strength heμ=4παem≃0.3, a lower limit of 141 GeV on the H±± mass is obtained at the 95% confidence level. For a doubly-charged Higgs decaying only into an electron and a tau and a coupling heτ≃0.3, masses below 112 GeV are ruled out.
A search for events with a high-energy isolated electron or muon and missing transverse momentum has been performed at the electron–proton collider HERA using an integrated luminosity of 13.6 pb−1 in ...e−p scattering and 104.7 pb−1 in e+p scattering. Within the Standard Model such events are expected to be mainly due to W boson production with subsequent leptonic decay. In e−p interactions one event is observed in the electron channel and none in the muon channel, consistent with the expectation of the Standard Model. In the e+p data a total of 18 events are seen in the electron and muon channels compared to an expectation of 12.4±1.7 dominated by W production (9.4±1.6). Whilst the overall observed number of events is broadly in agreement with the number predicted by the Standard Model, there is an excess of events with transverse momentum of the hadronic system greater than 25 GeV with 10 events found compared to 2.9±0.5 expected. The results are used to determine the cross-section for events with an isolated electron or muon and missing transverse momentum.
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