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The present study aimed to investigate secondary bacterial infections among patients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Coagulase-negative Staphylococci can infect immunocompromised patients. Linezolid resistance among Staphylococcus epidermidis is one of the most critical issues. In 2019, 185 SARS-CoV-2-positive patients who were admitted to North Khorasan Province Hospital (Bojnurd, Iran), were investigated. Patients having positive SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcriptase real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test results, who had a history of intubation, mechanical ventilation, and were hospitalized for more than 48 hours were included. After microbiological evaluation of pulmonary samples, taken from intubated patients with clinical manifestation of pneumonia, co-infections were found in 11/185 patients (5.94%) with S. epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Acinetobacter baumani, respectively. Remarkably, seven out of nine S. epidermidis isolates were linezolid resistant. Selected isolates were characterized using antimicrobial resistance patterns and molecular methods, such as Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing, and gene detection for ica, methicillin resistance (mecA), vancomycin resistance (vanA), and chloramphenicol-florfenicol resistance (cfr) genes. All of the isolates were resistant to methicillin, and seven isolates were resistant to linezolid. Nine out of 11 isolated belonged to the SCCmec I, while two belonged to the SCCmec IV. It should be noted that all patients had the underlying disease, and six patients had already passed away. The increasing linezolid resistance in bacterial strains becomes a real threat to patients, and monitoring such infections, in conjunction with surveillance and infection prevention programs, is very critical for reducing the number of linezolid-resistant Staphylococcal strains. A preprint of this study was published at https://europepmc.org/ article/ppr/ppr417742. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Concerns are growing about the prevalence of liver cancer as one of the most common health-threatening cancers due to the numerous risk factors for this type of cancer such as hepatitis, obesity, diabetes and fatty liver. This review article was done to investigate the protective role of probiotics and their metabolites against liver cancer, where probiotics showed various useful effects for treatment of disease especially cancer. Materials and Methods: For this study, searches were carried out using keywords including probiotic, Bacteria, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Liver Cancer and Hepatocellular Carcinoma from reliable databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, and Wiley. Results: This review revealed that, where products of probiotic bacteria had also therapeutic effects such as OK-432, Nisin, Bovicin HC5 (as important products), probiotic bacteria of the genus Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium such as Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus rhamnosus strains were the most useful probiotic bacteira against liver cancer. Conclusion: The use of probiotics due to their natural source and their secretory metabolites can be a good way to develop new therapies for various diseasesm with this systematic review showing that probiotics have shown therapeutic effects on liver cancer by having a wide range of properties such as anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to assess the volume of airborne fungi in the indoor and outdoor environment of poultry and cattle houses in the Mazandaran Province in Iran. Indoor and outdoor air of twenty cattle houses and twenty-five poultry houses were sampled using a single-stage impactor, which draws air at 20 L min-1 and impacts sampled material onto Petri plates containing malt extract agar. The plates were incubated at 30 °C for seven days, after which the resulting colonies were counted. The fungi were identified and counted microscopically and macroscopically. A total of 4,662 fungal colonies were isolated from 90 plates collected from indoor and outdoor air of cattle and poultry houses. Cladosporium (55.3 %), yeast (10.0 %), and Aspergillus (9.4 %) were the most common findings. The concentration of airborne fungi in cattle and poultry houses ranged from 10 CFU m-3 to 1700 CFU m-3 in indoor and 10 CFU m-3 to 2170 CFU m-3 in outdoor environments. Cladosporium had the highest mean indoor (424.5 CFU m-3) and outdoor (449.7 CFU m-3) air concentration in the cattle houses. In the poultry houses, the highest mean concentrations were measured for Cladosporium (551.0 CFU m-3) outdoors and yeast (440.7 CFU m-3) indoors. These levels might present an occupational risk, but threshold levels for these environments have yet to be established worldwide.