[14C]Artemisinin was taken up by Plasmodium falciparum in culture and concentrated in hemozoin. In vitro, hemin and artemisinin were found to undergo a chemical reaction forming two major products which were isolated by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The m/z values of the two products were 856 and 871. Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and HPLC of hemozoin isolated from [14C]artemisinin-treated parasites showed that the majority of the hemozoin-associated radioactivity comigrated with the synthetic adducts. When [14C]artemisinin was incubated with isolated hemozoin, [14C]artemisinin disappeared from the solution in a time-dependent manner. Some of the radioactivity present in the treated hemozoin also comigrated with the adducts on TLC. Thus, artemisinin appears to react covalently with heme in malaria hemozoin both in vitro and in situ.

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Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a leading cause of foodborne infections in China and a threat to human health worldwide. The main objective of this study is to determine the prevalence and characteristic of V. parahaemolyticus isolates in fish, oyster and shrimp samples from the South China domestic consumer market. To accomplish this, we examined 504 seafood samples from 11 provinces of China. The prevalence rates were 9.38, 30.36, and 25.60%, respectively. In summer (33.33%), the prevalence of V. parahaemolyticus was more common than that detected in the winter (14.01%). In addition, we identified 98 V. parahaemolyticus strains. The antimicrobial resistance trends of our seafood isolates to 15 antimicrobial agents revealed that major isolates were resistant to ampicillin (79.59%). Furthermore, 68.38% of the isolates were identified as being multidrug resistance. The prevalence of tdh or trh genes among the isolates was 8.16 and 12.24%, respectively. ERIC-PCR and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) results enabled classification of the isolates (n = 98) into different clusters, revealing genetic variation and relatedness among the isolates. Thus, our findings demonstrate the prevalence of V. parahaemolyticus in a variety of common seafood consumed domestically in China and provides insights into the dissemination of antibiotic-resistant strains, which should improve our microbiological risk assessment knowledge associated with V. parahaemolyticus in seafoods.

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SummaryA novel dimorphic fungus, Emergomyces orientalis sp. nov. a close relative of systemic pathogens in the family Ajellomycetaceae (Blastomyces, Histoplasma). The fungus is reported in a 64-year-old male from Shanxi, China. The patient developed disseminated skin lesions, productive cough with fever and showed nodular opacities in his left lung on chest radiography. The patient had no identified cause of immunodeficiency apart from type-2 diabetes mellitus. Clinical, histopathological and mycological characteristics of the agent are given, and its phylogenetic position is determined with multilocus sequence data. K E Y W O R D S

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It is common to treat some diseases with more than one medication simultaneously. Since more than one neurotransmitter system is involved in alcohol-seeking behaviour, then a therapeutic approach that targets more than one system should be more effective in reducing alcohol intake than one addressing a single system. To test this hypothesis, we compared the efficacy of low doses of individual drugs reported to reduce voluntary alcohol drinking to the efficacy of a mixture of these agents at the same low doses in reducing alcohol intake in three strains of alcohol-preferring rats (P, HAD, and Fawn-Hooded). After establishment of a stable baseline for alcohol intake in a continuous access paradigm, each rat received separate single i.p. injections of relatively low doses of either naltrexone (2.0 mg/kg), fluoxetine (1.0 mg/kg), the thyrotropin-releasing hormone analogue TA-0910 (0.2 mg/kg), a mixture of all three drugs, or the vehicle at 09:30. Each rat received all treatments, with an inter-injection washout period of at least 3 days. Alcohol and water intakes were measured at 6 and 24 h, and food intake was measured at 24 h, after the injection. Our results show that individual drugs did not significantly affect food, water, or alcohol intake. However, the mixture significantly reduced alcohol intake in all three strains, but had no effect on food intake. Similar results were obtained when the HAD rats received an oral dose of the individual drugs or the mixture. When P rats were given an i.p. injection of the mixture for 10 consecutive days, there was a continued suppressing effect. These findings show that a combination treatment designed to target simultaneously serotonergic, dopaminergic, and opioidergic systems can reduce alcohol intake, even though the doses of the individual drugs in the mixture are relatively low and ineffective when given singly.