1,721,014 research outputs found
Antibiotic resistance in the absence of antimicrobial use: mechanisms and implications
No full textThe selective pressure generated by the use of antibiotics in clinical, veterinary, husbandry and agricultural practices is considered the major factor responsible for the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria since the beginning of the antibiotic era. However, recent studies have consistently demonstrated that acquired resistance traits can also be found in bacteria isolated from humans and wild animals not subjected to significant antibiotic exposure and living in remote areas of the planet. The scope of this article is to review and discuss the current knowledge on this intriguing phenomenon, which underscores the complexity of the mechanisms involved in the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance and bears some relevant implications to the design and success of resistance-control strategies. © 2008 Expert Reviews Ltd
Plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance determinant qnrB19 in non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica strains isolated in Venezuela
No full textCarbapenem-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa carryng VIM-2 Metallo-Beta-Lactamase Determinants - First isolates from Croatia
No full textIn70 of plasmid pAX22, a blaVIM-1-containing integron carrying a new aminoglycoside phosphotransferase gene cassette
No full textAn Achromobacter xylosoxydans strain showing broad-spectrum resistance to β-lactams (including carbapenems) and aminoglycosides was isolated at the University Hospital of Verona (Verona, Italy). This strain was found to produce metallo-β-lactamase activity and to harbor a 30-kb nonconjugative plasmid, named pAX22, carrying a blaVIM-1 determinant inserted into a class 1 integron. Characterization of this integron, named In70, revealed an original array of four gene cassettes containing, respectively, the blaVIM-1 gene and three different aminoglycoside resistance determinants, including an aacA4 allele, a new aph-like gene named aphA15, and an aadA1 allele. The aphA15 gene is the first example of an aph-like gene carried on a mobile gene cassette, and its product exhibits close similarity to the APH(3′)-IIa aminoglycoside phosphotransferase encoded by Tn5 (36% amino acid identity) and to an APH(3′)-IIb enzyme from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (38% amino acid identity). Expression of the cloned aphA15 gene in Escherichia coli reduced the susceptibility to kanamycin and neomycin as well as (slightly) to amikacin, netilmicin, and streptomycin. Characterization of the 5′ and 3′ conserved segments of In70 and of their flanking regions showed that In70 belongs to the group of class 1 integrons associated with defective transposon derivatives originating from Tn402-like elements. The structure of the 3′ conserved segment indicates the closest ancestry with members of the In0-In2 lineage. In70, with its array of cassette-borne resistance genes, can mediate broad-spectrum resistance to most β-lactams and aminoglycosides
Rationale and evidence for the adjunctive use of N-acetylcysteine in multidrug-resistant infections
Full text linkBacterial multidrug resistance has been a serious issue for healthcare systems in recent decades, responsible for many infections and deaths. Due to the increasing incidence of antimicrobial resistance and scarce treatment options, research is focused on finding possible therapeutic adjuvants able to increase the effi- cacy of antibiotics. The aim of this article is a re-view of available evidence on the use of N-ace-tylcysteine (NAC).MEDLINE/PubMed was searched for appro-priate keywords. In vitro and in vivo preclinical studies, clinical studies, reviews, and meta -anal-yses were retrieved and selected based on rel-evance. A narrative review article was written, reporting published evidence and the expert opinion of the authors.Among possible adjunctive treatments, NAC has attracted the interest of researchers as a can-didate for re-purposing. It is a widely used drug with a good tolerability profile, mainly used as a mucolytic agent, with antioxidant, anti-inflam- matory properties and antibacterial activity. NAC acts on different mechanisms and stages of infec-tions, resulting in inhibition of biofilm formation, disruption of preformed biofilms, and reduction of bacterial viability. NAC may be administered as an aerosol in many types of infections, includ-ing cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis and infective flare of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and by the intravenous route in severe systemic infections (including septic shock) such as those caused by carbapenemase (KPC)-pro-ducing Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kp) and Carbape-nem-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CR-Ab).A rationale exists for using NAC as an adjunc-tive treatment in multidrug-resistant (MDR) in-fections, based on in vitro, in vivo and clinical evidence, and future research is needed to iden-tify candidate patients and optimal schedules for specific clinical conditions
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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