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It may be advisable to routinely test male patients with any urethral symptoms for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) regardless of the presence of discharge. Urethral symptoms include painful urination, urethral itch, and any unusual discharge. Male patients with STDs often have similar symptoms. Researchers compared a urine test and urethral swab tests on 219 male patients with urethral symptoms. Researchers tested for the presence of five STDs (chlamydia, gonorrhea, ureaplasma urealyticum, mycoplasma genitalium, and trichomonas). One hundred nineteen patients had discharge while 97 had no discharge. The most commonly detected STD was mycoplasma genitalium (17%) followed by chlamydia (13%), gonorrhea (11%), ureaplasma urealyticum (7%), and gonorrhea (1%). Researchers could not identify the cause of 35% of the urethral symptoms. These STDs were more common in patients with discharge. The sensitivity of these two tests was nearly three times higher when discharge was present.

Background and Objectives: The new commercially available polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assay, Amplicor C. trachomatis, was compared with cell culture of C. trachomatis, for the detection of chlamydial urogenital infections. Goal of this Study: To evaluate whether the Amplicor C. trachomatis PCR could improve the diagnosis of chlamydial urogenital infections, compared with cell culture of C. trachomatis considered as the reference method. Study Design: A total of 466 men and 290 women attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic were tested by the Amplicor test in urine in men, and in the cervix and urethra in women, and by cell culture in the urethra of both men and women and in the cervix of the women. Results: The prevalence of C. trachomatis was 13.7% by cell culture and 14.4% by the Amplicor test in men, and 3.5% by cell culture and 4.5% by the Amplicor test in women. After resolution of the discrepant results, the sensitivity of culture was 91.4% in male urethral specimens and 83.3% in endocervical and female urethral specimens. The resolved sensitivity of the PCR assay was 92.7% in male urine, 91.7% in endocervical samples, and reached 100% in testing both endocervical and female urethral specimens. Conclusion: This rapid PCR-based assay showed an improvement in quality for diagnosing C. trachomatis infections., Amplicor C. trachomatis, a new polymerase chain reaction assay (PCR), appears to be superior to cell culture in identifying Chlamydia trachomatis infections. A total of 1,046 urogenital samples were taken at a sexually transmitted diseases clinic. Cell culture accurately identified 91% of cases of chlamydia infection from male urethral specimens and 83% of chlamydia infections in cervical and urethral samples taken from women. The PCR assay accurately detected infection in 93% of male urine samples, 92% of female cervical samples, and in 100% of samples taken from women when both female cervical and urethral samples were analyzed.

The chemiluminometric sandwich immunoassay, Magic Lite Chlamydia by Ciba Corning (Medfield, MA), using one Chlamydia trachomatis-specific monoclonal immobilized to magnetic with acridinium ester and one polyconal immobilized to magnetic particles, was compared to cell culture in 291 urogenital specimens from 92 men and 102 women tested both in the cervix and urethra. The proportion of patients with positive culture results ranged from 11.8% among the women to 15% among the men, using microculture plates and peroxidase-antiperoxidase staining procedure with genus-specific monoclonal antibody (Orthodiagnostics, Raritan, NJ). The chemiluminometric method for detecting Chlamydia trachomatis antigen showed an overall sensitivity of 72.4%, specificity of 97.7%, positive predictive value of 77.7%, and negative predictive value of 96.9%. A higher sensitivity of Magic Lite was found in clinical specimens yielding more than 10 inclusions by well in cell culture. The newly developed chemiluminometric test, easy to perform, had the same limits in terms of sensitivity and positive predictive value than the other widely-used existing tests for detecting Chlamydia trachomatis antigen from urogenital specimens.

An increasing number of older people are attending colleges, and there are estimates that adult students will be in a majority around the turn of the century. Financial and other enrollment considerations are discussed.

A selection of 25 traditional recipes enjoyed by Italian people and typical of the region of Tuscany, Italy, is presented, with focus on the use of seasonal ingredients.

ABSTRACTThe prevalence of Chlamydia trachomatisinfection was 3.78% out of 1,277 volunteer students screened by direct fluorescence assay and Cobas Amplicor PCR. The infection was associated with the nonuse or inconsistent use of condoms in women (P= 0.026) and a previous sexually transmitted infection in men (P= 0.023). The most frequent genotypes determined by sequencing the omp1genes of 25 clinical isolates were E (44%) and F (20%), and some strains harbored mutations, but E genotype strains did not.

ABSTRACTThe commercial COBAS Amplicor CT/NG test (Roche Diagnostic Systems, Meylan, France) is a sensitive and specific method for detection of Chlamydia trachomatisinfections. This test currently consists of using a nucleic acid amplification method to detect C. trachomatisin first-void urine specimens and in endocervical swabs collected in 2-sucrose-phosphate (2SP) transport medium. We conducted a prospective study to determine whether the automated COBAS Amplicor CT/NG test can detect C. trachomatisin cervical specimens collected in PreservCyt transport medium (ThinPrep Pap Test; Cytyc Corporation, Boxborough, Mass.). PreservCyt medium is used to preserve cervical samples before the preparation of ThinPrep slides. We collected 1,000 cervical specimens from young women (age range, 15 to 25 years) during routine Pap smear tests. Only specimens with normal cytology and in which the gynecologist found no clinical evidence of urogenital infections were selected. The samples were stored in PreservCyt transport medium at 15 to 20°C. C. trachomatiswas detected in 22 of the 1,000 cervical specimens that had been stored in PreservCyt. To confirm the positive samples, the test was repeated on new endocervical swab specimens collected in 2SP transport medium. Only 9 of the 22 positive patients agreed to undergo this control, but all 9 retested positive. To evaluate the influence of storage conditions on the sensitivity of the C. trachomatisPCR test, all of the positive samples were stored at 15 to 20°C in PreservCyt transport medium and were retested every 2 weeks for 6 weeks. C. trachomatiswas successfully amplified from all 22 specimens for the whole 6-week period. The prevalence of C. trachomatisinfection was 2.2% in our study population. These results demonstrate that PreservCyt transport medium is a suitable transport medium for detection of C. trachomatisby the COBAS Amplicor CT/NG test. The ThinPrep Pap Test may enable gynecologists to monitor for both cervical lesions and C. trachomatisinfections with a single endocervical specimen.

Human papilloma virus type 16 (HPV-16) is the HPV most frequently associated with cervical carcinoma in humans. For the prevention or treatment of cervical carcinoma, the E6 and E7 oncoproteins appear to be good targets for vaccine-induced cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Lipopeptide vaccination is an efficient way of stimulating cellular responses. However, to synthesize effective lipopeptides, it is necessary to define which epitopes are immunogenic. In this study we first determined that peptide 80 – 88 of the E6 protein was recognized by CTL from a healthy donor in association with the HLA-B18 molecule. We then defined the HLA-B18 anchoring peptide motif by testing the binding of various short peptides with the HLA-B18 molecule and showed that it was related to the HLA-A1-specific peptide motif. Furthermore, in analyzing the potential E7 epitopes susceptible to associating with HLA-B18, we demonstrated that peptide E7 44 – 52 gave the strongest binding. It could also be recognized by CTL from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of the same healthy donor. Finally, with PBMC from a patient with a cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3, we found CTL which recognized the E6 80 – 88 epitope. We have hence identified two peptides encoded by the E6 and E7 proteins which are presented by the HLA-B18 molecule and could be included in a vaccine against HPV-16.

ABSTRACTThe fully automated COBAS AMPLICOR CT/NG test for the detection ofChlamydia trachomatiswas evaluated in a multicenter trial. Test performance was evaluated for 2,014 endocervical swab and 1,278 urine specimens obtained from women and for 373 urethral swab and 254 urine specimens obtained from men. Culture served as the reference test. Culture-negative, COBAS AMPLICOR-positive specimens that tested positive in a confirmatory PCR test for an alternative target sequence within the C. trachomatismajor outer membrane protein gene were resolved as true positives. The overall prevalence of chlamydia was 4.3% in cervical swabs and 11.0% in urethral swabs from men. When the results for each specimen type were considered separately, the resolved sensitivities were 96.5% (83 of 86) for endocervical swab specimens, 95.1% (39 of 41) for urine specimens from women, 100.0% (41 of 41) for urethral swab specimens from men, and 94.4% (17 of 18) for urine specimens from men; the resolved specificities were 99.4% (1,912 of 1,924) for endocervical swab specimens, 99.8% (1,204 of 1,207) for urine specimens from women, 98.5% (325 of 330) for urethral swab specimens from men, and 100.0% (236 of 236) for urine specimens from men. For the subset of patients from whom both swab and urine specimens were collected, the combined results for both specimen types were used to identify all infected patients. Using these combined reslts as criteria, the resolved sensitivities for the COBAS AMPLICOR test were 82.6% (38 of 46) for endocervical swab specimens, 84.4% (38 of 45) for urine specimens from women, 84.2% (16 of 19) for urethral swab specimens from men, and 89.5% (17 of 19) for urine specimens from men. In comparison, the sensitivity of culture was only 56.5% (26 of 46) for endocervical specimens and 63.2% (12 of 19) for urethral specimens from men. The internal control provided in the COBAS AMPLICOR test revealed that 2.9% of specimens were inhibitory when they were initially tested. Nevertheless, valid results were obtained for 99.1% of specimens because 68.7% of the inhibitory specimens were not inhibitory when a second aliquot of the original sample was tested. Two additional COBAS AMPLICOR-positive specimens were detected by retesting inhibitory specimens. The COBAS AMPLICOR CT/NG test for the detection of C. trachomatisexhibited equally high sensitivities and specificities with both urogenital swab and urine specimens and, thus, is well-suited for use in screening.

The new science of bibliology BIBLIOLOGY is a comparatively new science, dating from around the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century. The word first appeared [...]