MicrobLog: Microbiology Training

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amh10 — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:11:56 +0100

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First MicrobLog newsletter coming soon!

amh10 — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:01:55 +0100

The first official MicrobLog newsletter, will be circulated soon. It will contain the following:

Summaries of the latetst microbiology articles
Linked to Pubmed abstracts
Review of national/internation guidelines (hyperlinked)
Other interesting anecdotes
All in PDF format.

As always, all contributors are welcome. Does anyone have any ideas as to what should be included?

The 5 B's of Bioterrorism

amh10 — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:56:50 +0100

Brucella
Bartonella
Bacillus anthracis
Burkholderia
Botulism

AMH.

Brucella as a biological weapon

amh10 — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:11:28 +0100

Brucella has traditionally been considered a biological weapon. It is a Cat 3 in the ACDP classification, as is still seen as a "potential agent" by politicians. Reasons for this are¹:

Brucellosis

amh10 — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:56:04 +0100

History:

The isolation of Brucella melitensis as a human pathogen occured in the British Army, whilst they were stationed in Malta in the late 19th century. The discovery was made by Dr. David Bruce (Scottish pathologist and microbiologist in 1887). The "Mediterranean Fever" Commission concluded that on Malta, native goats were the reservoir of infection, and raw goat's milk was the vehicle of transmission from animal to human.

Enter Our Competition

amh10 — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:38:11 +0100

Today, I am giving away a copy of the "Posters2View" CD from ECCMID 2008. This contains all of the posters from the conference in Adobe Acrobat format. This is fully searchable and is a useful resource (containing the latest data):

ECCMID 2008

amh10 — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:29:03 +0100

This webiste was presented this year at ECCMID 2008:

The poster presented below got some feedback. One of the important things was increasing the virology content. I have therefore recruited a virologist to contribute to the site.

The poster can be found here.

Blood Products & Bacterial Contamination

amh10 — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:06:53 +0100

The article below was written because I was asked about bacterial contamination of blood products. A very good review can be found here.

AMH.

Large GNC in blood

amh10 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:12:47 +0100

Veillonella is a small, nonmotile, nonfermentative, obligatory anaerobic gram-negative coccus that fluoresces red under ultraviolet light and reduces nitrate. Several species have been described, of which Veillonella parvula appears to be the most common in specimens from humans.

Increasing Gram stain �??yield�??

amh10 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:48:01 +0100

Often with isolates that have scanty organisms, the yield from the Gram stain can be low. In the exam, you may be asked how you could increase the yield of the Gram stain. The answer is to perform the layered technique.

This can be done as follows:

Take one drop of your specimen. Place on the glass slide and allow to dry.
Repeat the procedure twice more, to complete three layers.
Gram stain as usual.

The process can be performed for all isolates from sterile sites, but in particular for neonatal CSFs.

AMH.