Treatment of cirrhotic patients with spontaneous peritonitis using antibiotics occasionally fails. Fungal infections may be one of the causes of antibiotic treatment failure in such patients. In this study we evaluated the clinical significance and characteristics of spontaneous fungal peritonitis (SFP). Consecutive cirrhotic patients with spontaneous peritonitis treated between 2000 and 2005 at a tertiary care center in Seoul, Korea, were included. We analyzed the clinical characteristics and the prognosis of SFP patients compared with patients with spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP). During the study period 416 patients developed spontaneous peritonitis and 15 (3.6 %) had SFP. Compared with patients with SBP, nosocomial peritonitis (peritonitis that developed after hospitalization for >72 h) was more common and the Child-Pugh score was higher in SFP patients (both, P < 0.01). Ten patients were infected with Candida spp. (C. albicans, 8; C. tropicalis, 1; C. glabrata, 1), and 5 with Cryptococcus neoformans. Eleven patients were co-infected with bacteria that were susceptible to the antibiotics administered. Only 5 patients were treated using appropriate anti-fungal agents. The 1-month mortality rate for SFP patients was 73.3 % (11 out of 15; median time to death, 2 days [range, 0-22]), which was significantly higher than patients with SBP alone (28.7 %, P = 0.0007). SFP is severe complication related to high mortality in cirrhotic patients. A longer admission and a higher Child-Pugh score may be risk factors. Immediate anti-fungal treatment is warranted in patients with spontaneous peritonitis, once fungus is found in the ascitic fluid.

Nano-size TiO 2 particles were obtained using various mesoporous materials and the particle sizes were determined by the pore sizes of mesoporous materials. The bandgap increments due to quantum size effect were observed in both anatase TiO 2 and rutile TiO 2 . The bandgap increment in anatase TiO 2 did not affect the efficiency of photocatalytic oxidation of 2-isopropyl-6-methyl-4-pyrimidinol. However, the bandgap increment in rutile TiO 2 enhanced the photocatalytic activity by virtue of the increase in redox potential of TiO 2 .

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Clinicians sometimes experience treatment failure in the initial empirical antibiotics treatment using cephalosporins in cirrhotic patients with spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP). Enterococcus, which is intrinsically resistant to cephalosporins, may be one of the causes of treatment failure. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical importance and the clinical characteristics of spontaneous enterococcal peritonitis (SEP). This was a retrospective cohort study of 359 patients with SBP treated in a single tertiary care center in South Korea from January 2000 through December 2004. We evaluated the clinical manifestation and the treatment results of SBP patients with enterococci identified from ascites culture. During the observation period, 13 of 359 patients (3.6%) diagnosed with culture-positive SBP had enterococcal peritonitis. For the initial empirical treatment, third-generation cephalosporins were administered to the 13 patients, ten of whom (76.9%) did not improve in the first 48 h. An in vitro antibiotic sensitivity test showed that the identified enterococci were susceptible to ampicillin plus gentamycin in eight patients (61.5%) and there was no vancomycin-resistant enterococcus. Although antibiotics were changed to antienterococcal antibiotics in 11 patients, only five patients improved. As a result, eight of the 13 patients (61.5%) with enterococcal SBP died during the observation period, and the one-month mortality was significantly higher from enterococcal SBP than from nonenterococcal SBP (P = 0.038). We conclude that enterococcal SBP has poor prognosis and it is reasonable to use antienterococcal antibiotics when enterococcus is identified from ascites culture of patients with liver cirrhosis.

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