Prevalence of helicobacter pylori infection among suspected peptic ulcer patients in Port Harcourt, Southsouth, Nigeria

Background information Helicobacter pylori is a ubiquitous organism that causes infections that are asymptomatic, and with no specific clinical signs and symptoms. Various diagnostic tests for H. pylori have been developed. This study was intended to understand the prevalence of H. pylori among suspected peptic ulcer patients in a tertiary medical facility in Port Harcourt. Methodology The ninety-eight (98) patients who consented were properly instructed before being given a capsule containing urea. This was swallowed with 50mls of water and they waited for ten minutes, after which, they breathed into a breath card until the indicator changed colour from orange to yellow. The breath card was then inserted into a device which detects the production or otherwise of the carbon dioxide with isotopically labelled carbon by displaying positive if present or negative if absent.Result In this study, out of the forty-five male and fifty-three female subjects that participated in this study, a study prevalence of 39.8% was observed. Also, a male to female prevalence ratio of 15.3:24.5 was observed with no statistical significance (X2=0.1519, P=0.6911). Similarly, the age group distribution of H. pylori infection among the male population showed age group 41-50 years as the modal (11.6%) prevalence, followed by age group 51-60 years (9.3%) with P>0.05 (X2=3.478, P=0.7470). In the same vein, the female distribution of H. pylori infection revealed that there was no significance among the different study groups with P>0.05 (X2=3.115, P=0.7943) and age group 31-40 years (16.1%) had the modal prevalence. Conclusion The high incidence of H. pylori infection among suspected peptic ulcer patients in Port Harcourt has been established, though not as high as other studies elsewhere. Therefore, public enlightenment should be encouraged by all public health stakeholders to arrest this trend

Microbial Profile of Wound Infections in a Nigerian Teaching Hospital

Background: This study set out to investigate the aerobic and facultative anaerobic microbial profile of wound infections in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. Methods: A total of 202 wound swabs samples were randomly collected from both in and out-patients presenting at the facility. One hundred and thirteen(55.9) of the samples were collected from males while 89(44.6) were from females. The age of the patients ranged from 32 days to 80 years. Samples were processed following standard operating protocols in the microbiology laboratory. Results: Of the 202 samples examined; 164(81.2) had microbial isolates while 38(18.8) yielded no growth. Among the 164 samples with positive microbial growth; 124(75.6) had single isolates while 40(24.4) had polymicrobial growth. Of the 113 males studied; 90(79.7) had microbial growth while 23(20.4) had no growth. Similarly; of the 89 females studied; 74(83.2) had microbial growth while 15(16.9) had no growth. Furthermore; the total microbial isolates from the study was 206. Gram-negative bacterial organisms accounted for 124(60.1) as against 82(39.9) from the Gram-positive's (p

Novel method to identify source-associated phylogenetic clustering shows that Listeria monocytogenes includes niche-adapted clonal groups with distinct ecological preferences.

While phylogenetic and cluster analyses are often used to define clonal groups within bacterial species, the identification of clonal groups that are associated with specific ecological niches or host species remains a challenge. We used Listeria monocytogenes, which causes invasive disease in humans and different animal species and which can be isolated from a number of environments including food, as a model organism to develop and implement a two-step statistical approach to the identification of phylogenetic clades that are significantly associated with different source populations, including humans, animals, and food. If the null hypothesis that the genetic distances for isolates within and between source populations are identical can be rejected (SourceCluster test), then particular clades in the phylogenetic tree with significant overrepresentation of sequences from a given source population are identified (TreeStats test). Analysis of sequence data for 120 L. monocytogenes isolates revealed evidence of clustering between isolates from the same source, based on the phylogenies inferred from actA and inlA (P = 0.02 and P = 0.07, respectively; SourceCluster test). Overall, the TreeStats test identified 10 clades with significant (P < 0.05) or marginally significant (P < 0.10) associations with defined sources, including human-, animal-, and food-associated clusters. Epidemiological and virulence phenotype data supported the fact that the source-associated clonal groups identified here are biologically valid. Overall, our data show that (i) the SourceCluster and TreeStats tests can identify biologically meaningful source-associated phylogenetic clusters and (ii) L. monocytogenes includes clonal groups that have adapted to infect specific host species or colonize nonhost environments.