RESUMO
AIM: To compare disease severity and clinical outcome of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) due to PCR-ribotype (RT) 244 with CDI due to other strains present in Auckland. METHOD: A retrospective, case-control study was conducted. Ten cases with CDI due to RT 244 were compared with 20 controls infected with other C. difficile strains. RT 244 isolates were further analysed for antimicrobial susceptibility, binary toxin genes and mutations in the tcdC gene. RESULTS: Cases were significantly more likely to have severe disease than controls (OR 9.33; p=0.015). 50% of cases had community-associated CDI compared with 15% of controls (p=0.078). All RT 244 isolates produced binary toxin and had a single-base pair deletion in tcdC at position 117. CONCLUSION: C. difficile RT 244 is a newly recognised strain in New Zealand. It shares several features that characterise RT 027. Given its propensity to cause severe community-associated disease, a heightened awareness of this strain is needed to ensure early testing in patients admitted from the community with identified risk factors for CDI.
Assuntos
Clostridioides difficile/classificação , Clostridioides difficile/patogenicidade , Infecções por Clostridium/epidemiologia , Infecções por Clostridium/microbiologia , Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes/epidemiologia , Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes/microbiologia , Estudos de Casos e Controles , Clostridioides difficile/isolamento & purificação , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Nova Zelândia/epidemiologia , Estudos Retrospectivos , Ribotipagem , Fatores de Risco , Índice de Gravidade de Doença , VirulênciaRESUMO
Most species of birds can lay only one egg per day until a clutch is complete, and the order in which eggs are laid often has strong and sex-specific effects on offspring growth and survival. In two recently established populations of the house finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) in Montana and Alabama, breeding females simultaneously adjusted the sex and growth of offspring in relation to their position in the laying order, thereby reducing the mortality of sons and daughters by 10 to 20% in both environments. We show experimentally that the reduction in mortality is produced by persistent and sex-specific maternal effects on the growth and morphology of offspring. These strong parental effects may have facilitated the rapid adaptive divergence among populations of house finches.
