The impact of vaccination with MCC vaccine on the prevalence of carriage of group C meningococci was consistent with herd immunity. The high impact on the carriage of ST-11 complex serogroup C could be attributed to high levels of capsule expression. High vaccine efficacy against disease in young children, who were not protected long-term by the schedule initially used, is attributed to the high vaccine efficacy against carriage in older age groups.

The development of ambient temperature ionic fluids has recently received intense interest due to their potential as environmentally benign solvents and their unusual solvent properties. [1][2][3] Studies have focused primarily on quaternary ammonium salts (QAS) with special emphasis on imidazolium cations. Decreased viscosities and increased conductivities have been achieved using fluorinated anions such as PF 6 À and (CF 3 SO 2 ) 2 N À , which are able to effectively shield the charge from the cation.[1] An alternative approach to the formation of ionic fluids is to start with a quaternary ammonium halide and shield the charge on the anion by complexing it with hydrogen-bond donors (HBD) such as carboxylic acids or amides. [4,5] These liquids have physical and solvent properties that are similar to ionic liquids formed with discrete ions. They are, however, easy to produce by simply mixing common commodity chemicals such as choline chloride and urea. To differentiate these liquids from other ionic liquids, the term deep eutectic solvents (DESs) has been coined as the mixtures are effectively eutectics formed between the two components, but unlike most molecular eutectic mixtures, the interaction between the ammonium salt and the hydrogen-bond donor results in a very large depression of freezing point which can be in the region of 200 8C. DESs are already used in the large-scale application for the electrowinning of metals from complex oxide matrices and the electropolishing of stainless steel due to their unexpected solvent properties which enable them to dissolve metal oxides. [6,7] Like other ionic liquids, one issue that is associated with the use of DESs is their viscosity compared to molecular solvents. This has a concomitant effect upon the conductivity, which is important for electrochemical applications such as those described above.The cause of the relatively high viscosity in ambient temperature ionic liquids is that the solvent species (ions) have relatively large radii ( % 3-4 ) compared to the average radius of the voids ( % 2 ). It has recently been shown that the viscosity of a fluid is related to the free volume and the probability of finding holes of suitable dimensions for the solvent molecules/ ions to move into.[8] The free volume of a liquid can be increased by decreasing the surface tension and the conductivity of an ionic fluid can be increased by using smaller ions. [8,9] In the current investigation we show that less viscous liquids with higher conductivities can be obtained using small quaternary ammonium cations such as ethylammonium and fluorinated hydrogen-bond donors such as trifluoroacetamide. Figure 1 shows the temperature at which the first solid starts to form on cooling the EtNH 3 Cl/amide mixtures as a function of composition. Most of the systems form glasses on freezing and the exact freezing point is difficult to identify but the values given in Figure 1 provide comparative information about the relative component interactions and the eutectic composition. Previously it was...

Darbepoetin alfa maintains hemoglobin as effectively as rHuEPO, but with a reduced dose frequency.

These results demonstrate that NESP safely and effectively corrects and maintains hemoglobin concentrations at a reduced dosing frequency relative to rHuEPO in patients with CRI, providing a potential benefit to patients and health care providers.

The 23rd World Scout Jamboree in 2015 took place in Japan and included over 33,000 scouts from 162 countries. Within nine days of the meeting ending, six cases of laboratory-confirmed invasive serogroup W meningococcal disease occurred among scouts and their close contacts in Scotland and Sweden. The isolates responsible were identical to one-another by routine typing and, where known (4 isolates), belonged to the ST-11 clonal complex (cc11) which is associated with large outbreaks and high case fatality rates. Recent studies have demonstrated the need for high-resolution genomic typing schemes to assign serogroup W cc11 isolates to several distinct strains circulating globally over the past two decades. Here we used such schemes to confirm that the Jamboree-associated cases constituted a genuine outbreak and that this was due to a novel and rapidly expanding strain descended from the strain that has recently expanded in South America and the United Kingdom. We also identify the genetic differences that define the novel strain including four point mutations and three putative recombination events involving the horizontal exchange of 17, six and two genes, respectively. Noteworthy outcomes of these changes were antigenic shifts and the disruption of a transcriptional regulator.