Our results showed a significant association between U. urealyticum (biovar 2) and NGU. They also suggest that the presence of U. parvum (biovar 1) in the male urethra might be the result of colonization.
We present a method for detecting the presence of Mycoplasma genitalium, Mycoplasma hominis, Ureaplasma parvum, and Ureaplasma urealyticum organisms, which are thought to be associated with nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) and other genitourinary infections, in clinical samples. This method consists of PCR amplification of a part of the 16S rRNA gene followed by 96-well microtiter plate hybridization assay using four species-specific capture probes to detect the targets. To test the efficacy of this method, we applied it to the detection of the four species in the urine of patients with NGU. There were no cross-reactions with other human mycoplasmas or ureaplasmas, and the PCR-microtiter plate hybridization assay detected as few as 10 copies of the 16S rRNA gene of each of the four species. Based on these results, this PCR-microtiter plate hybridization assay can be considered an effective tool for the diagnosis of genitourinary infections with mycoplasmas or ureaplasmas.Urethritis, an infection often acquired via sexual contact, is categorized into gonococcal urethritis or nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) depending on the presence or absence of Neisseria gonorrhoeae. In NGU, the infection is attributed to the pathogenic role of Chlamydia trachomatis, which has been detected in 30 to 40% of men with NGU (17), or to other pathogens, including mycoplasmas and ureaplasmas, in chlamydianegative patients.In our previous study, we reported a method to identify all human-origin mycoplasmas and ureaplasmas using PCR amplification and phylogenetic analysis (22). This method was shown to successfully detect 13 species of mycoplasmas and two species of ureaplasmas. In urinary samples from a cohort of men with NGU, however, we detected only four species of mycoplasma or ureaplasma-Mycoplasma genitalium, Mycoplasma hominis, Ureaplasma parvum, and Ureaplasma urealyticum (22). Among these four species, only M. genitalium was significantly more frequent in men with NGU or chlamydianegative NGU than in asymptomatic controls. However, the number of subjects examined in the previous study (22) was too small to definitively conclude that the other three species, M. hominis, U. parvum, and U. urealyticum, do not play pathogenic roles in NGU.Although our phylogeny-based technique has proven useful for identifying mycoplasmas and ureaplasmas in clinical samples, it requires the use of subcloning and sequencing to distinguish among multiple mycoplasmas and/or ureaplasmas in a sample. In the present study, therefore, we employed a DNA probe method to identify the nucleotide sequences of M. genitalium, M. hominis, U. parvum, and U. urealyticum and applied it to a newly developed hybridization-based microtiter plate assay to detect those four species in first-pass urine samples of men with NGU and asymptomatic controls. MATERIALS AND METHODSPrototype strains. The following prototype strains of 15 species of human mycoplasmas and ureaplasmas were used in this study. The following mycoplasmas and U. urealyticum (T-strain 960) were provided by T...
SummaryThe association between advanced age and the thiamine concentration has not been conclusively determined. A recent report from Japan showed that more than half of nursing home elderly residents at an institution had a low whole-blood thiamine concentration (,20 ng/mL). Therefore, a high incidence of low thiamine concentrations among hospitalized elderly has been anticipated in the Japanese population but never investigated. We evaluated the whole thiamine concentration in newly hospitalized elderly patients ($65 y old) with infectious diseases. Evaluations were performed on admission and at days 6-8 of hospitalization with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS). As a result, we enrolled a total of 471 patients from September 2015 to December 2016. The median thiamine concentration was 46 ng/mL (IQR, 37-58 ng/mL). Only 7 patients (1%) had thiamine concentrations below 20 ng/mL (66 nmol/L) on admission. Five of these patients were bedridden and unable to eat food by themselves, and the other two patients used loop diuretics for chronic heart failure. The thiamine concentration declined in most patients (84%) at days 6-8 of admission, regardless of their dietary intake during hospitalization. In conclusion, a low thiamine concentration was not prevalent among newly hospitalized elderly patients with infectious diseases. However, the thiamine concentration significantly decreased during the 6-8 d of hospitalization.
We report the fabrication and the transport measurements of FeTe1-xSex (x=0.4, 1) nanobridges along the c axis, toward the appearance of Josephson effects in single-crystal devices. Cross sectional areas of both FeTe0.6Se0.4 and FeSe nanobridges were systematically reduced to 0.06 μm2 by using a new method based on the focused ion beam (FIB) techniques. The critical current Ic measured by the current-voltage characteristics is roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than that for the conventional microbridges with larger cross sections, while the IcRn product, where R n is the normal-state resistance along the c axis, is still 3-4 times larger than the theoretical value for the appearance of Josephson effects. We argue the importance of the development of single-crystal Josephson devices and the comparison between FeTe0.6Se0.4 and FeSe nanobridges.
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