Jae-hoon Song

OBJECTIVES: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is highly prevalent in hospitals in many Asian countries. Recent emergence of community-associated (CA) MRSA worldwide has added another serious concern to the epidemiology of S. aureus infections. To understand the changing epidemiology of S. aureus infections in Asian countries, we performed a prospective, multinational surveillance study with molecular typing analysis. METHODS: We evaluated the prevalence of methicillin resistance

OBJECTIVES: To investigate antimicrobial resistance in clinical isolates of Acinetobacter spp. from two Korean hospitals. METHODS: Two hundred and sixty-five isolates of Acinetobacter spp. from two Korean hospitals were collected and were identified to species level using partial rpoB gene sequences. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed using a broth microdilution method. RESULTS: rpoB gene sequences indicated that 214 isolates (80.8%) were Acinetobacter baumannii, and allowed thes

A polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based test was developed for the detection of Salmonella typhi in the blood specimens from patients with typhoid fever. Two pairs of oligonucleotide primers were designed to amplify a 343-bp fragment of the flagellin gene of S. typhi. Amplified products were analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis and Southern blot hybridization by using a 32P-labeled 40-base probe internal to the amplified DNA. The nested PCR with two pairs of primers could detect 10 organisms

To investigate the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus with reduced susceptibility to vancomycin among methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains in Asian countries, a total of 1,357 clinical isolates of MRSA collected from 12 Asian countries were screened by using brain heart infusion agar plates containing 4 mg of vancomycin per liter. The presence of strains that were heterointermediately resistant to vancomycin (hVISA) was confirmed by population analysis. Of 347 (25.6%) MRSA isolates th

In vitro activities of colistin and other drugs were tested against 221 Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates that were collected between 2006 and 2007 in nine tertiary care South Korean hospitals from patients with bacteremia. The clonality of colistin-resistant K. pneumoniae (CRKP) isolates was assessed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). We found that 15 isolates (6.8%) were resistant to colistin. MLST showed that CRKP isolates were nonclonal, with colistin resistance in K. pneumoniae occurring in

The solubility of carbon dioxide in monoethanolamine (MEA) + ethylene glycol (EG) + water and monoethanolamine (MEA) + poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) + water has been measured at 313.2 K and at partial pressure ranges of carbon dioxide up to 2500 kPa. The concentrations of aqueous mixtures are 15.3 mass % MEA + 15.3 mass % EG, 15.3 mass % MEA + 42.3 mass % EG, 15.3 mass % MEA + 15.3 mass % PEG, and 15.3 mass % MEA + 42.3 mass % PEG. In each case, the solubility was represented as functions of parti

To investigate the genetic characteristics of erythromycin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae in Asian countries, 110 pneumococcal isolates were analyzed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). MLST analysis showed that 2 clonal complexes--CC236 (Taiwan19F-14 clone) and CC81 (Spain23F-1 clone)--are the major lineages of erythromycin-resistant S. pneumoniae in the Asian region. Pneumococcal isolates containing both the erm(B) and the mef(A) genes are thought to have originated from the Taiwan19F-14

Our study showed that the clinical features of elderly patients with S. aureus infection differed substantially from those of younger patients in terms of underlying diseases, co-morbid conditions, types of infection, and outcomes.

Densities and viscosities of mixtures of monoethanolamine (MEA) + ethylene glycol (EG) + water were measured at temperatures of (30, 40, 50, 60, and 70) °C. The concentration ranges were 0 to 84.7 mass % for both water and EG at 15.3 mass % MEA and 0 to 70.0 mass % for both water and EG at 30.0 mass % MEA. The experimental values were correlated as functions of temperature. The maximum deviations were less than 0.01% for densities and 0.4% for viscosities.