“
“To assess the contribution of alcohol, drug abuse and suicide attempts to out of hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) who are admitted to our intensive care unit (ICU).

Retrospective review of all OHCA admitted to the ICU over a 2-year period.

There were 26 OHCA. Six patients survived, all of whom had a cardiac aetiology for their arrest. Ten patients arrested due to external factors (drug misuse n = 4, alcohol excess n = 1, suicide attempts n = 4 and accidental choking n = 1). All of the patients who arrested secondary to external factors were young (37.2 +/- A 13.58 years), 90% were male and all died in hospital. All of the cases of drug misuse involved cocaine.

Alcohol,

drug misuse and suicide attempts contribute buy Fludarabine significantly to the number of OHCA Selleck MEK162 which are admitted to ICU. Moreover, cocaine usage has contributed to a number of OHCA in our study.”
“The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of macrolide-resistant Mycoplasma pneumoniae in Taiwan and to compare the clinical courses of pediatric patients with macrolide-resistant (MR) M. pneumoniae and macrolide-susceptible (MS) M. pneumoniae infection. Patients were among the children admitted to Chang Gung Children’s Hospital with mycoplasmal pneumonia between February and December 2011.

Detection for macrolide resistance was performed after informed consent was obtained. We retrospectively reviewed medical records and compared the clinical courses of two groups of patients of 73 children enrolled into our study. The rate of macrolide resistance in M. pneumoniae was 12.3 %. Longer hospital stay was observed in the MR patients than MS patients [median, 7 days vs. 5 days (P = 0.019)]. Clinical features or radiographic or laboratory findings are not helpful

to differentiate MR from MS mycoplasmal pneumonia. Early diagnosis of MR mycoplasmal pneumonia is crucial for the best management of these patients and obviates the need for extensive etiological searches of these nonresponding cases.”
“Effect of constitutive GDC 0032 expression of the aceEF-lpdA operon genes coding for the enzymes of NAD(+)-reducing pyruvate dehydrogenase complex on the anaerobic production of succinic acid from glucose by recombinant Escherichia coli strains was studied. Basic producer strains were obtained by inactivation of the main pathways for synthesis of acetic and lactic acids through deletion of the genes ackA, pta, poxB, and ldhA (SGM0.1) in E. coli MG1655 strain and by additional introduction of the Bacillus subtilis pyruvate carboxylase (SGM0.1 [pPYC]). A constitutive expression of the genes aceEF-lpdA in derivatives of the basic strains SGM0.1 P-L-aceEF-lpdA and SGM0.1 P-L-aceEF-lpdA [pPYC] was provided by replacing the native regulatory region of the operon with the lambda phage PL promoter. Molar yields of succinic acid in anaerobic glucose fermentation by strains SGM0.1 P-L-aceEF-lpdA and SGM0.