Bacterial Infections and Mycoses Commons^™

Prophylactic Antibiotics For Aspiration: Does It Prevent Pneumonia?, Akash Patel, James Dunne, Himani Patel

South Atlantic Division GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

Incidence Of Syphilis And Neurosyphilis Testing In A Large Sample Of Adults, Amy Mackenzie, Nayda Parisio-Poldiak, Caroline Minton, Barbara Gracious

South Atlantic Division GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

Mast Cell Colitis Associated With Yersinia Enterocolitica, Olufemi Osikoya, Gregory Brennan

North Texas GME Research Forum 2024

Introduction: Mast cells (MCs) have many functions including regulation of GI epithelial homeostasis, cross talk of the brain gut axis, host immune defenses, and inflammatory pathways. MCs are found in all layers of the GI tract and have been implicated in various gastrointestinal diseases. Although previously described in the literature, mast cell colitis is not considered a distinct clinical entity. This poses a challenge to the gastroenterologist who encounters such pathologic findings. Case Presentation: This is a case of a 76-year-old woman who was referred to the gastroenterology clinic for evaluation of a new diagnosis of colitis. The patient …

Puerperal Group A Streptococcus Infection Mimicking Gastrointestinal Ileus, Juhi Singhal, Mollie Mcdonnold, Carol Wang, Clarissa Villareal

Central & West Texas GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

Microbial Profile And Antimicrobial Resistance Patterns Of Surgical Intra-Abdominal Infections At A Tertiary Hospital In Tanzania A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study, Abduel Julius Kitua

Master of Surgery

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Among infections of surgical importance, intra-abdominal infections prevail among the most common in surgical patients with considerable morbidity and mortality. The ever-rising microbial resistance to commonly available antibiotics and geographical variations in microbial profile and resistance patterns poses a challenge to the management of these surgical infections of abdominal origin. The aim of this study was to evaluate microbiological characteristics and antibiotic susceptibility of isolates from intra-abdominal infections at a tertiary hospital in Tanzania and how these influence early treatment outcomes.

Managing Stress: A Study Of Stress Response Mechanisms In Mycobacteria, Augusto C. Hunt Serracin

Biology Dissertations - Archive

Mycobacteria encompass many pathogenic species known to cause severe disease in humans. A well-known example is Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of the lung disease tuberculosis, which kills millions of humans worldwide yearly. Pathogenic mycobacteria like Mtb are challenging to treat because of their innate ability to adapt to environmental stress. Their unique cell physiology and conserved stress responses allow them to combat biological insults, regulate growth, and regulate genes involved in stress; all these responses increase tolerance to antibiotics. The current therapies to treat mycobacterial infections are lengthy and, at times, unsuccessful, partly due to antibiotic tolerance. A …

Cerebrovascular Accident Complicating Pulmonary Tb: A Rare Co-Existence, Tesnim Hamdan, Iryna Witt, Nameer Ascandar, Srija Reddy

West Florida Division GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

Salmonella Detection In Food Using A Hek-Htlr5 Reported Cell-Based Sensor, Esma Eser, Victoria A. Felton, Rishi Drolia, Arun K. Bhunia

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The development of a rapid, sensitive, specific method for detecting foodborne pathogens is paramount for supplying safe food to enhance public health safety. Despite the significant improvement in pathogen detection methods, key issues are still associated with rapid methods, such as distinguishing living cells from dead, the pathogenic potential or health risk of the analyte at the time of consumption, the detection limit, and the sample-to-result. Mammalian cell-based assays analyze pathogens’ interaction with host cells and are responsive only to live pathogens or active toxins. In this study, a human embryonic kidney (HEK293) cell line expressing Toll-Like Receptor 5 (TLR-5) …

Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Fields Increase Antibiotic Susceptibility In Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, Alexandra E. Chittams-Miles, Areej Malik, Erin B. Purcell, Claudia Muratori

Bioelectrics Publications

Staphylococcus aureus is the leading cause of skin and soft-tissue infections (SSTIs). SSTIs caused by bacteria resistant to antimicrobials, such as methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), are increasing in incidence and have led to higher rates of hospitalization. In this study, we measured MRSA inactivation by nanosecond pulsed electric fields (nsPEF), a promising new cell ablation technology. Our results show that treatment with 120 pulses of 600 ns duration (28 kV/cm, 1 Hz), caused modest inactivation, indicating cellular damage. We anticipated that the perturbation created by nsPEF could increase antibiotic efficacy if nsPEF were applied as a co-treatment. To test this …

Reiq-Mediated Alarmone Signalling Regulates Growth, Stress-Induced Biofilm Formation And Spore Accumulation In Clostridioides Difficile, Areej Malik, Adenrele Oludiran, Asia Poudel, Orlando Berumen Alvarez, Charles Woodward, Erin B. Purcell

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The bacterial stringent response (SR) is a conserved transcriptional reprogramming pathway mediated by the nucleotide signalling alarmones, (pp)pGpp. The SR has been implicated in antibiotic survival in Clostridioides difficile, a biofilm- and spore-forming pathogen that causes resilient, highly recurrent C. difficile infections. The role of the SR in other processes and the effectors by which it regulates C. difficile physiology are unknown. C. difficile RelQ is a clostridial alarmone synthetase. Deletion of relQ dysregulates C. difficile growth in unstressed conditions, affects susceptibility to antibiotic and oxidative stressors and drastically reduces biofilm formation. While wild-type C. difficile displays increased biofilm …

Established Colonization Of Sneathia Vaginalis In A Mouse Model, Kailyn E. Turcios-Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Sneathia vaginalis (Sv) is a gram-negative anaerobic bacterium associated with adverse reproductive outcomes. Sv can traverse the fetal membrane and damage epithelial cells in vitro by producing a pore-forming cytotoxin, cytopathogenic toxin A (CptA). To further understand the transition of Sv from normal flora to a pathogen, an animal in vivo model needs to be created to observe the preliminary ascending infection before we begin to study the effects on pregnancy. Experimentation was conducted to optimize mouse breed, bacteria administration methods, and other variables that arise when working in vivo. The C57BL/6 mouse strain displayed the most consistent …

Exploring The Physiology Of Clostridioides Difficile: Selenium-Dependent Catabolism Of Host-Derived Nutrients, Michael A. Johnstone

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Clostridioides difficile is a bacterial pathogen that causes pseudomembranous colitis and the majority of antibiotic-associated diarrheal cases. Broad-spectrum antibiotic usage disrupts the normal gut microbiota and thereby compromises colonization resistance, the main defense against C. difficile infection. Treatment options are limited to vancomycin, fidaxomicin, and the fecal microbiota transplant. Addressing the scarcity of these therapeutics, we documented two explorations in C. difficile drug discovery: (i) evaluation of antibacterial and toxin-suppressing activity of (+)-puupehenone and similar derivatives, and (ii) clarification of a discrepancy in the hypothesized mechanism of auranofin against C. difficile. A better understanding of how C. difficile colonizes …

Acute Mastoiditis, That Must Be Hard To Hear!, Minda Guirguis, J Burton Burton

South Atlantic Division GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

Improving Clostridium Difficile Detection At Medical City Arlington: A Quality Improvement Project, Bremmy Alsbrooks, Nur-Alhuda Shahub, Shabaz Mallick, Jesse Brown, Afsha Rais, Afsha Rais

North Texas GME Research Forum 2024

INTRODUCTION: Hospital acquired Clostridium difficile infection are one of the costliest hospital acquired infections. Over the past year, there were 19 C diff cases. Reasons for this uptick in cases from previous years could be waiting too long for collection (where a patient has C diff on admission, but does not receive testing until several days later), antibiotics, environmental (for example, using the same toilet brush to clean bathrooms on the floor as well as the bathroom in a C diff patient's room, cleaning high touch areas less than two times during the day, etc.), or staff education. From our …

A Case Report On Syphilitic Lymphadenitis, Kelly Davis, Ryan Spilman, Alexander Enurah

Continental, MidAmerica, & Mountain Divisions GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

An Atypical Presentation Of Tuberculoid Leprosy On The Heel, Clara Barranco, Karthik Krishnamurthy, Angelia Stepien

South Atlantic Division GME Research Day 2024

No abstract provided.

A Challenging Diagnosis Of Intestinal Tuberculosis Mimicking Crohn's Disease, Justin Sanchez, Gabriel Gonzales, Monte Troutman

North Texas GME Research Forum 2024

Intestinal tuberculosis (ITB) is an underrecognized disease that shares many clinical, radiologic, endoscopic, and pathologic features with Crohn's disease, making differentiation difficult. This poses a significant problem as initiation of immunosuppressives for an assumed diagnosis of CD in a patient with ITB can lead to exacerbation of infection and life-threatening consequences. A 30-year-old Nepali man with a medical history only significant for Raynaud disease presented with a febrile illness, right lower quadrant abdominal pain, and productive cough over the course of a month. He immigrated from Nepal 3 years prior to presentation, denying other risk factors or specific symptoms of …

Machine-Learning-Enabled Diagnostics With Improved Visualization Of Disease Lesions In Chest X-Ray Images, Md. Fashiar Rahman, Tzu-Liang (Bill) Tseng, Michael Pokojovy, Peter Mccaffrey, Eric Walser, Scott Moen, Alex Vo, Johnny C. Ho

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The class activation map (CAM) represents the neural-network-derived region of interest, which can help clarify the mechanism of the convolutional neural network’s determination of any class of interest. In medical imaging, it can help medical practitioners diagnose diseases like COVID-19 or pneumonia by highlighting the suspicious regions in Computational Tomography (CT) or chest X-ray (CXR) film. Many contemporary deep learning techniques only focus on COVID-19 classification tasks using CXRs, while few attempt to make it explainable with a saliency map. To fill this research gap, we first propose a VGG-16-architecture-based deep learning approach in combination with image enhancement, segmentation-based region …

Harnessing Antagonistic Pleiotropy: Tolc-Dependent Coliphages Can Drive Reduced Antibiotic Resistance In E. Coli, Cooper Mckenna

CMC Senior Theses

The rise of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial pathogens has been a growing concern in healthcare around the world, and bacteriophage (phage) therapy is a promising method to combat MDR infections. One defense mechanism of E. coli against antibiotics is the TolC-AcrAB efflux pump. At the same time, some phages use TolC as a surface receptor to infect the cell. This puts TolC at a crossroads in which it is beneficial to the bacteria to protect against antibiotics but harmful by allowing phage infection, creating the potential for evolutionary trade-offs. Previous research has identified only three TolC-dependent phages and shown phage-resistant E. …

The Role Of Intracellular Growth During The Systemic Spread Of Listeria Monocytogenes, Jamila S. Tucker

Theses and Dissertations--Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular pathogen transmitted through the consumption of contaminated food products. Typically, infections range from mild, self-limiting gastroenteritis to life-threatening systemic infections; however, the events that occur in the gut to allow for this spread are unclear.

The focus of my thesis aims to determine how L. monocytogenes escape the mesenteric lymph nodes (MLN), the final barrier to systemic spread for both commensal and pathogenic bacteria in the gut. I have shown that intracellular replication of L. monocytogenes in an as-yet-unidentified cell type is essential for the colonization and dissemination of the bacteria from the MLN. …

Contributions Of The Replication Initiator Protein Dnaa To Physiology And Virulence Of The Lyme Disease Spirochete, Andrew Krusenstjerna

Theses and Dissertations--Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Borrelia burgdorferi, the etiological agent of Lyme disease, is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States. The spirochetal population is naturally maintained by consistently cycling between Ixodid ticks and small vertebrates. To survive within these diverse niches, B. burgdorferi has evolved a unique physiology and regulatory network to sense and respond to environmental fluxes. Replication is a hallmark of the Lyme spirochete’s enzootic life cycle, specifically at the nymphal tick-to-vertebrate interface. The mechanisms and regulatory schema for the basic cellular processes in B. burgdorferi, or indeed any member of the phylum spirochaetota, are largely unknown. The central hypothesis …

Syphilis Presenting In The Axillary Lymph Node, Kevin Benny, Pooja Agrawal, Suimin Qui, Angelica Robinson

Gulf Coast Division GME Research Symposium 2024

No abstract provided.

Critical Airway Obstruction Secondary To Acute Necrotizing Tracheitis, Vishesh Persaud, Austin Makadia, S Choudhury, A Chohan, Abhay Vakil

Gulf Coast Division GME Research Symposium 2024

No abstract provided.

Clinical Impact Of Indeterminate Quantiferon-Tb Test Results For A Patient With Recurrent Inflammatory Bowel Disease Flares, Asad Rehman, Bushra Bangash, Aashka Patel, Anam Zara, Hong Thai, Ismail Hader

Gulf Coast Division GME Research Symposium 2024

No abstract provided.

Unusual Delayed Invasive Infection With Staphylococcus Capitis Following Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting: A Case Report And Literature Review, Suhas Tatapudi, Daniel J. Avila Castillo, Ibrahim Yazji

Gulf Coast Division GME Research Symposium 2024

No abstract provided.

A Rare Case Of Infected Bronchogenic Cyst Growing Salmonella Enterica, Diane S. Habib, Jordan Torres, Salman Alim

Gulf Coast Division GME Research Symposium 2024

No abstract provided.

Novel Engineering Approaches For Orthopedic Injury Treatment And Infection Diagnosis, Cynthia Co

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Bioengineering has made significant contributions to the treatment of orthopedic injury through interdisciplinary approaches. Central to these advancements are many orthopedic implants, including anchors and joint replacements, which have been designed to restore mobility. Despite their functional efficacy, these products have limited lifespan and are associated with many complications, such as implant-associated infection. The success of implant design and function, both in the short and long term, is paramount for enhancing patient outcomes and overall well-being. Therefore, my thesis work is dedicated to addressing these critical challenges, aiming to maximize their treatment effect while minimizing the implant-associated complications.

Long-term patient …

Epitope Mapping Novel Monoclonal Antibodies Against Borrelia Burgdorferi Surface Proteins Ospc And Bmpa, Eliza M. Doyle

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In response to the progressive nature of Lyme disease, direct diagnostic testing of Borrelia burgdorferi surface proteins was proposed as a quicker and more sensitive alternative to the current indirect detection methods. To determine the ability of novel monoclonal antibodies to detect the surface lipoproteins BmpA and OspC, recombinant fragments of these proteins were created. These fragments were tested against the putative diagnostic antibodies via western blotting as a means to map the epitope of each of the proteins that the respective antibodies recognize. All BmpA fragments with deletions on the N-terminal end exhibited reactivity, indicating that the epitope is …

Effectiveness Of Doxycycline As Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (Doxy-Pep) For Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Infections (Stis) Among Men Who Have Sex With Men (Msm) In Central Florida, Micah P. Greer

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs), notably syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, have been increasing among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the United States. The rise has been attributed to various factors, including increased condomless sexual acts due to the high uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention. To address this concerning trend, post-exposure prophylaxis with doxycycline (Doxy-PEP) has emerged as a potential biomedical intervention. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of Doxy-PEP in preventing bacterial STIs among MSM in Central Florida, a region with rising STI rates. A de-identified dataset from Pineapple Health Clinic in Orlando, …

Clostridioides Difficile: Identification Of Rival Organisms & Evaluation Of Non-Antibiotic Treatment Implementation, Justin Davis

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Clostrioides difficile is a common cause of nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections. Patients receiving antibiotic treatment experience dysbiosis of gut microbiota, and C. difficile, normally held in check by the various other organisms, takes this opportunity to propagate. Symptoms of infection generally include diarrhea, colitis, dehydration, and fever. Understanding that C. difficile generally only causes illness when it is the dominant bacterium (i.e. when growth is relatively unchecked by other microbes), it is appropriate to investigate potential competitive organisms that may be introduced after antibiotic courses or during active C. difficile infection to effectively displace it. Fecal samples from the University …