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Xiaosu Wang,* Dan Zhang,* Zheng Dai, Jingdan Yu, Qichao Li, Litao Zhang Department of Clinical Laboratory, Wuhan Asia General Hospital, Wuhan Asia General Hospital Affiliated to Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, 430056, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Litao Zhang, Email dandanzhangnihao@126.comIntroduction: W. confusa has been known to cause various human infections. It is naturally resistant to vancomycin and is difficult to identify using traditional methods, which may lead to misidentification and delay treatment.Case Presentation: We present a case of a 42-year-old male patient with gastrointestinal bleeding and coronary heart disease who developed sepsis caused by Weissella confusa. The patient’s blood cultures showed the presence of gram-positive coccobacilli, later identified as W. confusa through matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Antimicrobial susceptibility testing revealed that W. confusa had low minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for some drugs (eg, ampicillin) and higher MICs for others (eg, cefotaxime). Empirical treatment with vancomycin was initially started, but after obtaining the identification and susceptibility results, the treatment was switched to meropenem combined with daptomycin, resulting in a successful outcome.Conclusion: Weissella confusa bacteremia is relatively rare, and accurate pathogenic diagnosis is essential for effective clinical treatment.Keywords: Weissella confusa, bacterial identification, 16S rRNA, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry

A new method of combined steam flash-explosion and alkaline treatment (SFE-AT) was developed to extract cellulose fibers from bark of cotton stalks, and lightweight composites with favorable properties were made from the obtained fibers and polypropylene (PP). It was reported that the cellulose fibers from bark of cotton stalks had higher mechanical properties than those from most lignocellulosic byproducts. However, conventional method of using strong alkaline condition (30–100 g/L NaOH) for extraction of cellulose fibers from lignocellulosic byproducts led to environmental pollution and high cost. In this study, bark of cotton stalks were treated using three methods, including alkaline treatment (AT), steam flash-explosion (SFE) and SFE-AT. The different cotton stalk fibers were blended with PP fibers and compression-molded into composites under optimized conditions (temperature of 170 °C, pressure of 3 MPa, 4 min). The results showed that PP composites reinforced by cotton stalk fibers from SFE-AT had the best mechanical properties and stability to water, attributing to the largest surface area and highest cellulose content of cotton stalk fibers by SFE-AT. SFE could separate bark of cotton stalks with high efficiency and subsequent mild AT could sufficiently remove the non-cellulose impurities by using NaOH solution with concentration as low as 5 g/L. Ultra-lightweight PP composites with the bulk density of 0.27 g/cm3 could be prepared with cotton stalk fibers by SFE-AT. Overall, the method of SFE-AT with high efficiency and low cost could be very useful in exploring industrial applications of bark of cotton stalks and other lignocellulosic byproducts.