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Introduction: Actinomycosis is an unusual chronic granulomatous infectious disease. They are commensals in various sites of the human body but with little pathogenicity. Actinomyces israelii is the most prevalent species but more than 30 species have been described. Infection of the lower respiratory tract is unusual, the involvement of mediastinum being even rarer.

Case report: A 63-year-old man, previously healthy and living in a rural area, presented with a 5-month history of hemoptysis, pleuritic pain, weight loss, and night sweats. Community-acquired pneumonia with a mediastinal mass was documented, for which he received antibiotic management. Thoracoscopy was carried out for diagnosis and resection of the mediastinal mass due to inconclusive findings in the percutaneous biopsy. Pathology reported the presence of filamentous Gram-positive bacteria visible in Grocott staining. Due to the pathology findings, and the fact that no other infectious agents were identified, a diagnosis of actinomycosis was established. Treatment with oral amoxicillin 1g TID for 6 months was initiated.

Conclusions: As far as we are aware, we present the sixth case of mediastinal actinomycosis. We present this case to bring attention to this rare but clinically relevant presentation to be considered as a differential diagnosis of mediastinal masses and to emphasize the need for specific anaerobic cultures to improve the diagnostic yield.

Introduction: Mortality due to carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA) infection has increased worldwide in recent years. The risk factors associated with hospital settings in Iran and the role of strain resistance mechanisms in many studies are unclear.

Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on consecutive non-repetitive patients with CRPA infections isolated from seven major hospitals from northwest of Iran. We evaluated different risk factors and characteristics of bacteria for the death or survival of patients.

Results: In this study, 116 CRPA isolates were obtained from patients admitted to seven hospitals. Forty-one (35.3%) patients were enrolled in the study of mortality risk factors. Significant risk factors associated with mortality included the site of infection, hospitalization in different wards, the use of invasive devices, and the type of carbapenem resistance mechanisms.

Conclusions: ICU admission, the use of mechanical ventilation and chest tube and infection with pandrug-resistant strains were the most important factors in increasing mortality due to CRPA infection. These results suggested that the clinicians should emphasize the proper use of antibiotic and invasive procedures.

Introduction: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a prime cause of chronic hepatitis worldwide, that often silently progresses to fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Notably, the majority of individuals infected with HCV develop symptoms at late stages, often associated with liver damage that cannot revert after virus clearance. Thus, current antiviral therapy alone is rather insufficient to eliminate the global burden of HCV in the near future.During the past few years, vitamin D deficiency as well as certain single nucleotide polymorphisms in the vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene have been associated with liver fibrosis. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the possible correlation between VDR polymorphisms ApaI (rs7975232) and TaqI (rs731236) and the fibrosis stage of patients with HCV infection from Thrace, Greece.

Methods: Eighty-one patients with HCV infection underwent transient elastography for the assessment of their fibrosis stage, and PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) genotyping for VDR ApaI and TaqI polymorphisms. VDR genotypes were then statistically associated with the patients' fibrosis stage using ordinal regression models.

Results: Non-cirrhotic stages were positively correlated with TaqI TT genotype (p=0.003) and negatively correlated with TaqI TC genotype (p=0.007). In the presence of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and linkage disequilibrium between the two VDR polymorphisms, mild fibrosis stages (F0-2) were correlated with ApaI/TaqI GG/TT (p=0.002) and TG/TT (p=0.008) genotypes, while cirrhotic stage F4 was associated with ApaI/TaqI TG/TC genotype (p=0.038).

Conclusions: TaqI TT and ApaI/TaqI GG/TT, TG/TT and TG/TC genotypes could be explored as prognostic genetic markers for fibrosis susceptibility in HCV patients.

Introduction: Cutibacterium acnes is a Gram-positive anaerobic rod that is part of the normal skin flora, as well as the oral cavity, genitourinary and gastrointestinal tracts. When detected, it is usually considered contaminant; but it is infrequently responsible for invasive infections, mainly neurosurgical and joint infections. It is rarely found as a pathogen responsible for lung infections or empyema.

Case report: We present a unique case of C. acnes empyema following severe COVID-19, making this the first documented case of empyema due to this bacterium following COVID-19. The microorganism was identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The patient was treated with a combination of antibiotics and surgical intervention.

Conclusions: This case demonstrates the potential severity of C. acnes empyema. Further studies are needed to establish management guidance.

Introduction: Lactococcus garvieae, a zoonotic pathogen, may rarely infect humans through the consumption of fish. Documented manifestations of L. garvieae infection in humans include infective endocarditis, prosthetic joint infections, liver abscesses, peritoneal dialysis-associated peritonitis, osteomyelitis, meningitis, infective spondylodiscitis, acalculous cholecystitis, and urinary tract infection.

Case report: An 87-year-old female was hospitalized for coffee-ground emesis secondary to acute gastritis after eating cooked fish. One week after her discharge, she developed new-onset confusion and was returned to the hospital. Chest computed tomography revealed total consolidation of the left lung and a multiloculated left pleural effusion. The patient required intubation and direct admission to the intensive care unit. Pleural fluid and blood cultures grew L. garvieae, which was susceptible to ceftriaxone, penicillin, and vancomycin. Despite intensive antibiotic therapy and supportive care for thirteen days, the patient remained in irreversible shock, and the family opted for comfort care.

Conclusions: Heretofore unreported, this case demonstrates that L. garvieae can cause bronchopneumonia and empyema.

Introduction: Actinotignum schaalii is a small Gram-positive facultative anaerobic coccoid rod that was reclassified in 1997 from the genus Actinomyces and is difficult to culture with usual microbiological techniques, as it is slowly growing. A. schaalii is an emerging human pathogen that is most commonly implicated in urinary tract infections (UTIs), but has also been isolated less frequently from abscesses of various sites (such as the skin, the genitourinary tract, surgical sites or intraabdominal).

Methods: All cases where A. schaalii was identified during a 6-year period (January 2016 - January 2022) in the University Hospital of Heraklion were reviewed.

Results: A. schaalii was isolated in 11 cultures from 10 patients. The site of infection was skin and soft tissue in nine out of eleven cultures (81.8%) and the bone was the site of infection in two patients (18.2%). Most cultures were polymicrobial. The median age of patients was 55.5 years (interquartile range 34-63 years), and 80% (n=8) were male. A. schaalii was susceptible to beta-lactams, quinolones and vancomycin, but resistant to clindamycin, erythromycin and metronidazole. Moreover, two cases of diabetic patients diagnosed with polymicrobial diabetic foot osteomyelitis from this organism are presented in detail. Both patients were successfully managed with targeted antimicrobial treatment and prompt surgical management.

Conclusions: A. schaalii is an emerging pathogen that is likely under-reported due to difficulties in isolation and identification. Herein two cases of diabetic foot osteomyelitis are also presented in detail, successfully managed with targeted antimicrobial therapy and surgical debridement.

Introduction: Lactobacilli are Gram-positive rods, commensals of the normal human flora. Generally, these lactic acid-producing bacteria are considered contaminants, however over the last years their clinical relevance is reevaluated. Lactobacillus delbrueckii is very rarely isolated and only a few cases of L. delbrueckii urinary tract infections (UTIs) have been reported, mainly in females.

Case report: We report the case of a L. delbrueckii UTI in an 82-year-old male suffering from benign prostate hyperplasia with repeated episodes of acute urinary retention over the last month before presenting to our hospital. The catheter urine culture grew >10⁵ CFUs/mL of pure L. delbrueckii on Columbia CNA blood agar and on Trypticase soy agar. Identification was achieved by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), using VITEK MS (bioMérieux, France). The patient was successfully treated with cefixime for ten days. A follow-up urine culture performed 7 days after antibiotic discontinuation was sterile.

Conclusions: To our knowledge the present is the second case of L. delbrueckii urinary tract infection in a male patient. Further cases are required to confirm the clinical significance of these unusual pathogens and their involvement in human urinary tract infections.

Introduction: COVID-19 is an emerging infectious disease that remains to be further investigated.

Case report: Here, we describe a case of COVID-19 in an octogenarian woman with comorbidities who slowly recovered during hospitalization, but died due to sudden cardiac death after 2 weeks of hospitalization. Her nasopharyngeal and anal swabs returned positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR on day 7 of hospitalization. The NGS showed possible intraindividual evolution of virus. The sample from the nasopharyngeal swab yielded a B.1470 variant classified as clade GH. This variant showed mutation in the spike gene D614G; N gene; NS3 gene; NSP2 gene and NSP12 gene. The sample from the anal swab showed similar mutation but with additional point mutation in spike gene S12F and was classified as B.1.465 variant.

Conclusions: The possibility of the gastrointestinal tract that served as reservoir for virus mutation accumulation should also be considered and the potential impact of viral fecal transmission in the environment should be further investigated.

The emergence and increasing prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens has become a major global healthcare problem. According to the World Health Organization if these trends continue, mortality from infection in 2050 will be higher than that from cancer. Microorganisms have various resistance mechanisms against different classes of antibiotics that emphasize the need for discovery of new antimicrobial compounds to treat bacterial infections. An interesting and new strategy for disarming pathogens is antivirulence therapy by blocking bacterial virulence factors or pathogenicity. Therefore, the use of these new pathoblockers could reduce the administration of broad-spectrum antimicrobials and prevalence of resistant strains. This review provides an overview of the antivirulence strategies published studies between years 2017 and 2021. Most antivirulence strategies focused on adhesins, toxins and bacterial communication. Additionally, targeting two-component systems and ncRNA elements were also examined in some studies. These new strategies have the potential to replace traditional antimicrobial agents and can be used to treat infections, especially infections caused by resistant pathogens, by targeting virulence factors.