Helicobacter pylori is the primary cause of peptic ulcer disease and an etiologic agent in the development of gastric cancer. H. pylori infection is curable with regimens of multiple antimicrobial agents, and antimicrobial resistance is a leading cause of treatment failure. The Helicobacter pylori Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring Program (HARP) is a prospective, multicenter U.S. network that tracks national incidence rates of H. pylori antimicrobial resistance. Of 347 clinical H. pylori isolates collected from December 1998 through 2002, 101 (29.1%) were resistant to one antimicrobial agent, and 17 (5%) were resistant to two or more antimicrobial agents. Eighty-seven (25.1%) isolates were resistant to metronidazole, 45 (12.9%) to clarithromycin, and 3 (0.9%) to amoxicillin. On multivariate analysis, black race was the only significant risk factor (p < 0.01, hazard ratio 2.04) for infection with a resistant H. pylori strain. Formulating pretreatment screening strategies or providing alternative therapeutic regimens for high-risk populations may be important for future clinical practice.
vaccine administration data are reported to CDC by multiple entities using immunization information systems, the Vaccine Administration Management System, pharmacy systems, or direct submission of electronic health records. (https:// www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/distributing/about-vaccine-data. html). Persons were considered fully vaccinated if they received the second dose in a 2-dose COVID-19 vaccine series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) or 1 dose of the single-dose Janssen (Johnson and Johnson) COVID-19 vaccine. admissions with confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis (C),** , † † and COVID-19 deaths (D) § §, ¶ ¶ among adults, by age group, and rate ratio for persons aged ≥65 or ≥70 and 18-49 years -United States,
Computer-assisted analysis of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) libraries can facilitate comparisons of fragment patterns present on multiple gels. We evaluated the ability of the Advanced Analysis (version 4.01) and Database (version 1.12) modules of the Phoretix gel analysis software package (Nonlinear USA, Inc., Durham, N.C.) to accurately match DNA fragment patterns. Two gels containing 38 lanes of SmaI-digested Enterococcus faecalis OG1RF DNA were analyzed to assess the impact of (i) varying the lane position of the standards, (ii) using gel plugs made at different times, and (iii) normalizing the fragment patterns by using molecular weight (MW) algorithms versus retardation factor (R f ) algorithms. Two sets of PFGE libraries (one containing SmaI restriction patterns from 62 Enterococcus faecium isolates and the other containing SmaI restriction patterns of 89 Staphylococcus aureus isolates) were analyzed to assess the impact of varying the matching tolerance algorithm (designated as the vector box setting [VBS]) in the Phoretix software. Varying the lane position of standards on a gel and using gel plugs made on different days resulted in different VBSs, although it was not possible to judge whether those differences were statistically significant. Normalization of E. faecalis OG1RF fragment patterns by R f and MW methodology yielded no statistically significant differences in variability between the same fragment on different lanes. Suboptimal VBSs decreased the specificity with which related isolates were grouped together in dendrograms. The optimal VBS for analysis of PFGE fragment patterns from E. faecalis isolates differed from that for S. aureus isolates and sometimes was not that recommended by the manufacturer. Thus, computer-assisted analysis of PFGE patterns seemed to compensate for the intra-and intergel variation evaluated in the present study, and optimizing the software for the species to be tested was a critical preliminary step before further PFGE library analysis.Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is the typing method of choice for enterococci and staphylococci due to its high discriminatory power for these organism groups (8, 19). However, comparisons of fragment patterns present on multiple gels from large sets of isolates are technically difficult (4, 21). Many variables, such as the concentration of DNA in the agarose plugs, the amount of agarose in the gel, the electrophoresis voltage, the gel temperature, and the buffer strength, contribute to intra-and intergel variation and complicate comparisons of fragment patterns on multiple gels and in PFGE libraries (2, 4). (PFGE libraries consist of multiple gels that contain fragment patterns of a single bacterial species.) Much of the interlaboratory variation reported for PFGE results can be attributed to individual user technique, different types of PFGE instrumentation, and different protocols used for testing (4, 21). However, variation can also be attributed to fragment position normalization and matching tolerance algorit...
During the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supplemented traditional COVID-19 case and death reporting with COVID-19 aggregate case and death surveillance (ACS) to track daily cumulative numbers. Later, as public health jurisdictions (PHJs) revised the historical COVID-19 case and death data due to data reconciliation and updates, CDC devised a manual process to update these records in the ACS dataset for improving the accuracy of COVID-19 case and death data. Automatic data transfer via an application programming interface (API), an intermediary that enables software applications to communicate, reduces the time and effort in transferring data from PHJs to CDC. However, APIs must meet specific content requirements for use by CDC. As of March 2022, CDC has integrated APIs from 3 jurisdictions for COVID-19 ACS. Expanded use of APIs may provide efficiencies for COVID-19 and other emergency response planning efforts as evidenced by this proof-of-concept. In this article, we share the utility of APIs in COVID-19 ACS.
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