Fatal hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis-induced multiorgan dysfunction secondary to Burkholderia pseudomallei sepsis: A case report.

BACKGROUND: Burkholderia pseudomallei (B. pseudomallei) is a short, straight, medium-sized Gram-negative bacterium that mostly exists alone, without a capsule or spores, has more than three flagella at one end, and actively moves. B. pseudomallei confers high morbidity and mortality, with frequent granulocytopenia in B. pseudomallei sepsis-related deaths. However, mortality may be related to hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) secondary to B. pseudomallei infection. CASE SUMMARY: A 12-year-old female was referred from a local hospital to the pediatric intensive care unit with suspected septic shock and fever, cough, dyspnea, and malaise. After admission, supportive symptomatic treatments including fluid resuscitation, anti-infective therapy, mechanical ventilation, and a vasoactive drug maintenance cycle were carefully initiated. The patient became unconscious, her blood pressure could not be maintained even under the exposure of vasoactive drugs, and she experienced cardiorespiratory arrest. The patient died due to ineffective high-quality in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A subsequent bone marrow smear examination revealed extensive phagocytosis, and the blood culture was positive for B. pseudomallei. Family history revealed a sibling death from B. pseudomallei sepsis 5 years earlier. CONCLUSION: The higher mortality rate in patients with B. pseudomallei sepsis may be related to secondary HLH after infection, wherein multiorgan dysfunction syndrome may be directly related to infection or immune damage caused by secondary HLH. Patients with B. pseudomallei can be asymptomatic and can become an infective source.

Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccination Against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Infection and Symptoms - China, December 2022-February 2023.

What is already known about this topic?: A considerable percentage of the population has received both primary and booster vaccinations, which could potentially provide protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron infections and related symptoms. What is added by this report?: The self-reported infection rate, as determined from an online survey, reached its peak (15.5%) between December 19 and 21, 2022, with an estimated 82.4% of individuals in China being infected as of February 7, 2023. During the epidemic, the effectiveness of booster vaccinations against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection was found to be 49.0% within three months of vaccination and 37.9% between 3 and 6 months following vaccination. Furthermore, the vaccine effectiveness of the booster vaccination in relation to symptom prevention varied from 48.7% to 83.2% within three months and from 25.9% to 69.0% between 3 and 6 months post-booster vaccination. What are the implications for public health practice?: The development and production of efficacious vaccines, together with prompt vaccinations or emergency vaccinations, have the potential to mitigate the epidemic's impact and safeguard public health.

ß-diversity in temperate grasslands is driven by stronger environmental filtering of plant species with large genomes.

Elucidating mechanisms underlying community assembly and biodiversity patterns is central to ecology and evolution. Genome size (GS) has long been hypothesized to potentially affect species' capacity to tolerate environmental stress and might therefore help drive community assembly. However, its role in driving ß-diversity (i.e., spatial variability in species composition) remains unclear. We measured GS for 161 plant species and community composition across 52 sites spanning a 3200-km transect in the temperate grasslands of China. By correlating the turnover of species composition with environmental dissimilarity, we found that resource filtering (i.e., environmental dissimilarity that includes precipitation, and soil nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations) affected ß-diversity patterns of large-GS species more than small-GS species. By contrast, geographical distance explained more variation of ß-diversity for small-GS than for large-GS species. In a 10-year experiment manipulating levels of water, nitrogen, and phosphorus, adding resources increased plant biomass in species with large GS, suggesting that large-GS species are more sensitive to the changes in resource availability. These findings highlight the role of GS in driving community assembly and predicting species responses to global change.

Surveillance results of foodborne pathogens in market-sold food in Fuyang District / 预防医学

Objective@# To investigate the contamination of foodborne pathogens in market-sold food in Fuyang District, Hangzhou City, so as to provide insights into intensified supervision of food safety and management of foodborne diseases.@*Methods@# A total of 1 176 market-sold food samples belonging to 11 categories were collected from Fuyang District from 2019 to 2022, and nine foodborne pathogens, including Salmonella, Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Yersinia enterocolitica, were detected according to the National Handbook for Surveillance of Risk of Food Contamination and Hazardous Factors in 2019 and national criteria for food microbiological testing. The detection of foodborne pathogens was analyzed in food samples with different categories and sources. @*Results@#Foodborne pathogens were detected in 332 out of 1 176 market-sold food samples, with a detection rate of 28.23%, and the detection rates of V. parahaemolyticus, Enterobacter sakazakii, non-O1/non-O139 V. cholerae, Y. enterocolitica, Vibrio vulnificus, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes were 39.47%, 36.92%, 35.48%, 34.09%, 13.85%, 12.26%, 8.58%, 6.65% and 2.53%. The detection rates of foodborne pathogens were 38.36%, 24.90%, 15.48%, 11.90%, 5.68%, 5.56%, 4.48%, 1.67%, 1.25% and 0.81% in aquatic food and its products, meat and meat products, local specialty food, catering food, flavoring, foods for special dietary uses, milk and milk products, egg and egg products, cooked food and other food, respectively, while foodborne pathogens were not detected in frozen drinks. In addition, the detection rates of foodborne pathogens were 24.97%, 15.19%, 9.88%, 7.89% and 7.23% in farmers' markets, supermarkets, online stores, vendors and restaurants, respectively. @*Conclusions@#A high detection rate of V. parahaemolyticus, E. sakazakii and non-O1/non-O139 V. cholerae was found in market-sold food in Fuyang District from 2019 to 2022, and the contamination of foodborne pathogens was serious in aquatic food and its products, meat and meat products and local specialty food.

Plant genome size modulates grassland community responses to multi-nutrient additions.

Grassland ecosystems cover c. 40% of global land area and contain c. 40% of soil organic carbon. Understanding the effects of adding nutrients to grasslands is essential because they provide much of our food, support diverse ecosystem services and harbor rich biodiversity. Using the meadow steppe (grassland) study site of Inner Mongolia, we manipulated seven key nutrients and a cocktail of micronutrients to examine their effects on grassland biomass productivity and diversity. The results, explained in structural equation models, link two previously disparate hypotheses in grassland ecology: (1) the light asymmetry competition hypothesis and (2) the genome size-nutrient interaction hypothesis. We show that aboveground net primary productivity increases predominantly from species with large genome sizes with the addition of nitrogen, and nitrogen plus phosphorus. This drives an asymmetric competition for light, causing a decline in species richness mainly in species with small genome sizes. This dynamic is likely to be caused by the nutrient demands of the nucleus and/or the scaling effects of nuclear size on cell size which impact water use efficiency. The model will help inform the best management approaches to reverse the rapid and unprecedented degradation of grasslands globally.

Titanium with aligned, elongated pores for orthopedic tissue engineering applications.

Porous titanium with elongated and aligned pores, mimicking the anisotropic structure of bone, was created by solid-state expansion of argon trapped in elongated pores between titanium wires. Both elastic moduli and yield strengths are larger in the longitudinal direction (E = 51 GPa, sigma y = 338 MPa) than in the transverse direction (E = 41 GPa, sigma y = 267 MPa). Finite-element analysis of simplified anisotropic structures provides insight into the local micromechanical behavior of these porous materials, evaluating elastic modulus, resistance to plastic deformation, and localized stress concentrations which may be experienced under biological loading. Preliminary in vitro cell culture studies further demonstrate the influence of the elongated porous microstructure on osteoblast colonization behavior. These studies suggest that as an optimized material, titanium with aligned, elongated pores is promising for applications in orthopedic tissue engineering, as it combines high strength, toughness, and biocompatibility of titanium with the reduced stiffness and open porosity suitable for mechanical integration with bone tissue produced by aligned pores.

A bioactive titanium foam scaffold for bone repair.

While titanium has been clinically successful as an orthopedic or dental implant material, performance problems still persist related to implant-bone interfacial strength and mechanical modulus mismatch between titanium and tissue. We describe here the preparation of a titanium foam as a better mechanical match to tissue with surfaces attractive to bone cells through deposition of an organically-modified apatite layer (organoapatite). In a rotating bioreactor, these organoapatite-coated foams are successfully colonized by preosteoblastic cells. Finite element analyses suggest that ingrown tissue in these systems may improve both implant performance and tissue formation through load-sharing and stress distribution. The novel metal-ceramic-polymer hybrid materials described here hold great promise for bone tissue engineering.