A couple of years ago, I received an email from Rubriq offering me the opportunity to be paid for performing peer review on pre-submission journal manuscripts. Rubriq’s mission is not a bad one, which is to reduce redundancies in the manuscript submission and journal review process. Basically, if one has a biological or medical manuscript (they […]
Several preceding posts (here, here and here) had described the change in healthcare-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA) clones in the local setting, and either the SGH Diagnostic Bacteriology blog or I (or both) will probably write on community-associated MRSA clones in Singapore in the near future. But from a practical point of view, does it really matter […]
A middle-aged man with well-controlled diabetes mellitus was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APML). He completed both induction and consolidation with all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and idarubicin, and was in remission. He was subsequently maintained on outpatient weekly low-dose methotrexate (25 mg/week) and 6-mercaptopurine. Six months later, he presented with fever and cough for 2 […]
The Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Diagnostic Bacteriology section’s official blog had recently described the change in healthcare-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA) clones in our local hospitals, with a shift from a near-complete monopoly by ST239-MRSA-III to a duopoly between the older clone and ST22-MRSA-IV (or UK-EMRSA-15) within a period of 10 years from 2001 to 2010. I like […]
A middle-aged woman presented with fever and lethargy, and was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) after thorough work-up. She underwent standard induction chemotherapy (IA 3+7) and received fluconazole prophylaxis in view of cost concerns. She developed neutropenic fever 3 days after completion of chemotherapy, and was prescribed IV imipenem after an extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Klebsiella […]
A major highlight of working on the Singapore MRSA evolution and competition study was obtaining the very old MRSA isolates from the 1980’s and 1990’s. One of the biggest issues in the Singapore clinical microbiology scene – to me – is the loss of historical isolates (and the lack of any attempts to correct this to […]
Two days ago, our paper on the “Evolution dynamics of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in a healthcare system” was published in the BiomedCentral journal Genome Biology. We sequenced the genomes of 260 clinical MRSA isolates cultured over 3 decades (1982 to 2010) in four Singaporean hospitals – a number that seemed really high back in 2011, but […]
A timeline movie of different MRSA clones discovered in Singapore. The movie unfortunately plays rather slowly (just over a minute). More detailed descriptions will be provided in subsequent blog posts.
An elderly man who was 4 years post-coronary artery bypass grafting developed fever for a week, which he initially ignored as being “just a flu”. However, he developed central chest pain on the 7th day of fever, and was admitted to a local hospital. His WBC was 6,700 cells per mcL (65% neutrophils). The blood […]
Clostridium difficile is an anaerobic Gram-positive rod that can colonise the intestines of humans and other animals. It is related to the bacterium that causes tetanus (Clostridium tetani) as well as the bacterium that causes food poisoning and occasionally gas gangrene (Clostridium perfringens). Like all Clostridia, it can form spores, which it does as a survival response […]
MIPHIDIC 