Emerging technologies for antibiotic susceptibility testing.

Superbugs such as infectious bacteria pose a great threat to humanity due to an increase in bacterial mortality leading to clinical treatment failure, lengthy hospital stay, intravenous therapy and accretion of bacteraemia. These disease-causing bacteria gain resistance to drugs over time which further complicates the treatment. Monitoring of antibiotic resistance is therefore necessary so that bacterial infectious diseases can be diagnosed rapidly. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) provides valuable information on the efficacy of antibiotic agents and their dosages for treatment against bacterial infections. In clinical laboratories, most widely used AST methods are disk diffusion, gradient diffusion, broth dilution, or commercially available semi-automated systems. Though these methods are cost-effective and accurate, they are time-consuming, labour-intensive, and require skilled manpower. Recently much attention has been on developing rapid AST techniques to avoid misuse of antibiotics and provide effective treatment. In this review, we have discussed emerging engineering AST techniques with special emphasis on phenotypic AST. These techniques include fluorescence imaging along with computational image processing, surface plasmon resonance, Raman spectra, and laser tweezer as well as micro/nanotechnology-based device such as microfluidics, microdroplets, and microchamber. The mechanical and electrical behaviour of single bacterial cell and bacterial suspension for the study of AST is also discussed.

Pallidal and caudate volumes correlate with walking function in multiple sclerosis.

BACKGROUND: Walking dysfunction is common in multiple sclerosis (MS). The thalamus and basal ganglia seemingly have important associations with walking performance. The contribution of these subcortical gray matter (SGM) structures for walking dysfunction is poorly understood in MS. PURPOSE: This study examined associations among volumes of the thalamus and basal ganglia with walking outcomes in MS. METHOD: We enrolled 61 MS patients who underwent brain MRI and completed the 6-minute walk (6MW) and timed 25-foot walk (T25FW). Volumes of the thalamus, caudate, putamen, and pallidum as well as whole-brain white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM) were calculated from 3D T1-weighted structural brain images. We examined associations using bivariate correlations (r) and partial correlations (pr) that controlled for age, MS clinical course, and whole-brain WM and GM volumes. We further performed hierarchical linear regression (HLR) for identifying the strongest SGM correlate of walking performance. RESULTS: The 6MW and T25FW correlated significantly with volumes of the thalamus (r's=.382 & .383), caudate (r's=.388 & .416), pallidum (r's=.457 & .457), and putamen (r's=.258 & .293) in bivariate correlations. The 6MW and T25FW remained significantly correlated with caudate (pr's=.243 & .312) and pallidum (pr's=.321 & .345) volumes in partial correlations. Pallidum volume was the strongest SGM correlate of 6MW (ß=.39) and T25FW (ß=.40) performance in HLR. CONCLUSION: We provide novel evidence of possible SGM structures, particularly the pallidum and perhaps caudate, as correlates of walking performance in MS.