scholarly journals Targeted Hydrolysis of β-Lactam Antibiotics in Dry Suspension Residue: A Proposed Method to Reduce Ecological Toxicity and Bacterial Resistance

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 2225
Author(s):  
Arne Brahms ◽  
Christian Peifer

Within our therapeutic drug arsenal, antibiotics are of significant importance and are widely used in huge amounts to medicate, e.g., bacterial infections in humans and animals. Regarding the more than 10 types of antimicrobial drugs, the highly important orally taken β-lactams typically include dry suspension formulations. In many cases for this formulation, even after usage according to specification, residues remain in the prepared dry suspension bottle, which is often cleaned at home and the contents are flushed down into domestic wastewater. This plausible practice adds to the fact that, e.g., amoxicillin can be found in river waters, and is to be monitored in the EU, as given by resolution 2008/105/EG article 8b. When imported into the environment, β-lactam antibiotics can cause severe ecological problems, and equally importantly, therapeutic applications of these antibiotics are endangered by the forced development of pathogenic resistance. To avoid these issues, we developed and validated a fast, simple, robust, and cost-effective method using a 1 M sodium hydroxide solution to effectively hydrolyze and inactivate β-lactam residues. In this paper, we strongly propose a procedure involving pharmacists to take back residue of β-lactam dry suspension formulations. Subsequently, qualified pharmaceutical staff could inactivate β-lactam residue in the laboratory by the proposed method, and then dispose of the mixture into wastewater.

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0249930
Author(s):  
Aziz Belkadi ◽  
Gaurav Thareja ◽  
Darshana Dadhania ◽  
John R. Lee ◽  
Thangamani Muthukumar ◽  
...  

Kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage kidney failure, but transplanted allograft could be affected by viral and bacterial infections and by immune rejection. The standard test for the diagnosis of acute pathologies in kidney transplants is kidney biopsy. However, noninvasive tests would be desirable. Various methods using different techniques have been developed by the transplantation community. But these methods require improvements. We present here a cost-effective method for kidney rejection diagnosis that estimates donor/recipient-specific DNA fraction in recipient urine by sequencing urinary cell DNA. We hypothesized that in the no-pathology stage, the largest tissue types present in recipient urine are donor kidney cells, and in case of rejection, a larger number of recipient immune cells would be observed. Extensive in-silico simulation was used to tune the sequencing parameters: number of variants and depth of coverage. Sequencing of DNA mixture from 2 healthy individuals showed the method is highly predictive (maximum error < 0.04). We then demonstrated the insignificant impact of familial relationship and ethnicity using an in-house and public database. Lastly, we performed deep DNA sequencing of urinary cell pellets from 32 biopsy-matched samples representing two pathology groups: acute rejection (AR, 11 samples) and acute tubular injury (ATI, 12 samples) and 9 samples with no pathology. We found a significant association between the donor/recipient-specific DNA fraction in the two pathology groups compared to no pathology (P = 0.0064 for AR and P = 0.026 for ATI). We conclude that deep DNA sequencing of urinary cells from kidney allograft recipients offers a noninvasive means of diagnosing acute pathologies in the human kidney allograft.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aziz Belkadi ◽  
Gaurav Thareja ◽  
Darshana Dadhania ◽  
John R. Lee ◽  
Thangamani Muthukumar ◽  
...  

AbstractRenal transplantation is the method of choice for patients with end stage kidney failure. But transplanted allograft could be affected by viral and bacterial infections and immune rejections. The standard test for the diagnosis of acute pathologies in kidney transplants is the renal biopsy. However, noninvasive tests would be desirable. Various methods using different techniques have been developed by the transplantation community. But these methods expect improvements. We present here a cost-effective method based on estimating donor-specific DNA fraction in recipient urine based on sequencing of recipient urine DNA only. We hypothesized that in the no-pathology stage, the largest tissue types present in recipient urine are donor kidney cells and in case of rejection, a larger number of recipient immune cells would be observed. Extensive in-silico simulation was used to tune the sequencing parameters: number of variants and depth of coverage. Sequencing of DNA mixture from 2 healthy individuals showed the method high prediction accuracy (maximum error < 0.04). We then demonstrated the insignificant impact of familial relationship and ethnicity using an in-house and public database. Lastly, we performed recipient deep urine DNA sequencing in 32 samples representing two pathology groups: acute rejection (AR, 12 samples) and acute tubular injury (ATI, 11 samples) and 9 samples with no pathology. We found a significant association between the donor-specific DNA fraction in the two pathology groups compared to no pathology (P = 0.0064 for AR and P = 0.026 for ATI). We conclude that deep DNA sequencing of recipient urine offers a noninvasive means of diagnosing and prognosticating acute pathologies in the human kidney allograft.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 0647-0654
Author(s):  
Juracir Silva Santos ◽  
César Reis ◽  
Efraim Lázaro Reis ◽  
Raildo Mota de Jesus ◽  
Luís Gustavo Teixeira dos Reis ◽  
...  

Ammonium ion of digested samples of food, soil, fertilizer and water was determined based on the reaction of the ammonium ion with formaldehyde, and then titrated with sodium hydroxide solution. The optimization of variables such as the amount of formaldehyde and EDTA concentration carried out through univariate analysis. Under optimized conditions, the method allowed ammonium determination with the achieved detection limit of 1.83 mg L-1, a quantification limit of 6.11 mg L-1 and precision of 6.0 - 0.5% for ammonium solutions of 0.400 - 3.773 mg L-1 concentration, respectively. The procedure was validated using the Kjeldahl method. The method was successfully applied to determinate ammonium in samples of water, soil, fertilizer and oat. The proposed procedure resulted in a simple, fast and cost effective method to the determination of ammonium in routine analysis.


The choice of cost-effective method of anticorrosive protection of steel structures is an urgent and time consuming task, considering the significant number of protection ways, differing from each other in the complex of technological, physical, chemical and economic characteristics. To reduce the complexity of solving this problem, the author proposes a computational tool that can be considered as a subsystem of computer-aided design and used at the stage of variant and detailed design of steel structures. As a criterion of the effectiveness of the anti-corrosion protection method, the cost of the protective coating during the service life is accepted. The analysis of existing methods of steel protection against corrosion is performed, the possibility of their use for the protection of the most common steel structures is established, as well as the estimated period of effective operation of the coating. The developed computational tool makes it possible to choose the best method of protection of steel structures against corrosion, taking into account the operating conditions of the protected structure and the possibility of using a protective coating.


1996 ◽  
Vol 33 (8) ◽  
pp. 23-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Dor ◽  
N. Ben-Yosef

About one hundred and fifty wastewater reservoirs store effluents for irrigation in Israel. Effluent qualities differ according to the inflowing wastewater quality, the degree of pretreatment and the operational parameters. Certain aspects of water quality like concentration of organic matter, suspended solids and chlorophyll are significantly correlated with the water column transparency and colour. Accordingly optical images of the reservoirs obtained from the SPOT satellite demonstrate pronounced differences correlated with the water quality. The analysis of satellite multispectral images is based on a theoretical model. The model calculates, using the radiation transfer equation, the volume reflectance of the water body. Satellite images of 99 reservoirs were analyzed in the chromacity space in order to classify them according to water quality. Principal Component Analysis backed by the theoretical model increases the method sensitivity. Further elaboration of this approach will lead to the establishment of a time and cost effective method for the routine monitoring of these hypertrophic wastewater reservoirs.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Peng ◽  
Yue Feng ◽  
Zhu Tao ◽  
Yingjie Chen ◽  
Xiangnan Hu

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 354-364
Author(s):  
Mohammad Mahmoudi Goumari ◽  
Ibrahim Farhani ◽  
Navid Nezafat ◽  
Shirin Mahmoodi

Infectious diseases have caused historical pandemics in the world. Three strategies, including sanitation programs, antimicrobial drugs, and vaccines are considered for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Today, some infectious diseases cause millions of mortalities universally. Due to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, as well as some limitations of traditional vaccines, focusing on novel strategies is essential. Multi-Epitope Vaccines (MEVs), as a novel strategy, have been designed based on immunoinformatics methods; epitope prediction by authentic servers, attachment of epitopes using proper linkers, physicochemical, immunological and structural evaluation by bioinformatics tools that are basic stages in MEVs designing. Advantages such as cost-effective, high safety, less time consumption in designing, the application of natural adjuvants, and satisfactory preclinical evaluation outstand MEVs than other types of vaccines. Therefore, MEVs are promising vaccines against resistant diseases such as lower respiratory infection and diarrhea.


2001 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Jonsson ◽  
Joyce Carlson ◽  
Jan-Olof Jeppsson ◽  
Per Simonsson

Abstract Background: Electrophoresis of serum samples allows detection of monoclonal gammopathies indicative of multiple myeloma, Waldenström macroglobulinemia, monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, and amyloidosis. Present methods of high-resolution agarose gel electrophoresis (HRAGE) and immunofixation electrophoresis (IFE) are manual and labor-intensive. Capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) allows rapid automated protein separation and produces digital absorbance data, appropriate as input for a computerized decision support system. Methods: Using the Beckman Paragon CZE 2000 instrument, we analyzed 711 routine clinical samples, including 95 monoclonal components (MCs) and 9 cases of Bence Jones myeloma, in both the CZE and HRAGE systems. Mathematical algorithms developed for the detection of monoclonal immunoglobulins (MCs) in the γ- and β-regions of the electropherogram were tested on the entire material. Additional algorithms evaluating oligoclonality and polyclonal concentrations of immunoglobulins were also tested. Results: CZE electropherograms corresponded well with HRAGE. Only one IgG MC of 1 g/L, visible on HRAGE, was not visible after CZE. Algorithms detected 94 of 95 MCs (98.9%) and 100% of those visible after CZE. Of 607 samples lacking an MC on HRAGE, only 3 were identified by the algorithms (specificity, 99%). Algorithms evaluating total gammaglobulinemia and oligoclonality also identified several cases of Bence Jones myeloma. Conclusions: The use of capillary electrophoresis provides a modern, rapid, and cost-effective method of analyzing serum proteins. The additional option of computerized decision support, which provides rapid and standardized interpretations, should increase the clinical availability and usefulness of protein analyses in the future.


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