Doctor's recommendation was the most important factor in encouraging people to be vaccinated against influenza. Doctors should be geared up with precise information and actively encourage high risk population in order to increase vaccination coverage.

Imipenem/sulbactam combination, colistin and tigecycline showed good in vitro activities against carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii isolates. Even though colistin is bactericidal against carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii, the colistin/rifampicin combination is more warranted in order to be certain.

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Careful monitoring and appropriate preventive/therapeutic strategies for infectious complications, comparable to those for allo-SCT recipients with MAC, should also be applied to those with RIC, especially after engraftment.

Background/Aims: Hemodialysis (HD) patients are recommended to be immunized against influenza annually, but the immune response after vaccination is known to be weakened in these patients. We intended to compare the efficacy of influenza vaccines in HD patients with that in healthy people, and we also evaluated the additive effect of a booster vaccination in HD patients. Methods: During the 2003–2004 influenza season, 100 patients on HD and 50 age-matched healthy controls were recruited from the Korea University Guro Hospital. The HD patients were divided into two groups: single-dose group (50 patients) and booster group (50 patients). Eight weeks following the influenza vaccination, the serum antibody responses were compared. Results: Although the antibody response of the HD patients was impaired in comparison with that of healthy controls, more than 90% of the HD patients showed protective antibody levels. Booster vaccination did not significantly increase the immune response in HD patients. Conclusions: Influenza vaccination in HD patients should be encouraged, but the immune response was comparatively impaired in subpopulations, including patients with a long-term HD history (>2.5 years), with a higher urea reduction rate, or with underlying diabetes. There was no effect of a booster vaccine dose on the antibody titers.

Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) is an important commensal microorganism. The purpose of this study was to determine the epidemiological relation between NTS isolates from livestock and NTS isolates from human by analyzing antimicrobial susceptibilities and performing molecular typing. We determined the serotypes of 36 human clinical isolates and 64 livestock isolates, performed antimicrobial susceptibility testing against 8 antibiotics, and determined the molecular types of isolated NTS spp. by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). In human isolates, S. enteritidis was the most common serotype (17 isolates; 47.2%) and S. typhimurium the second most (8 isolates; 22.2%). In livestock isolates, S. typhimurium was the most common serotype (15 isolates; 23.44%), and S. enteritidis was the second most (14 isolates; 21.88%). Ampicillin and tetracycline resistance were 50% (32/64 isolates) each among broiler-chicken NTS isolates. No human or livestock NTS isolates showed resistance to ciprofloxacin, TMP-SMX, or ceftriaxone. However, 19.4% (7/36) and 46.8% (30/64) of the human and livestock NTS isolates were resistant to nalidixic acid (MIC ≥16 mg/mL), respectively. The presence of the three identical PFGE molecular types from human and broiler-chicken NTS isolates suggests the possibility of transmission from livestock to humans.

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