Background In Germany, antenatal influenza vaccination is recommended since 2010, but uptake remains low. Several countries recently introduced antenatal pertussis vaccination, which is currently under consideration in ...

Background Due to limited therapeutic options, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREF) is of great clinical significance. Recently, rising proportions of vancomycin resistance in enterococcal infections have been ...

Toxoplasmosis, while often an asymptomatic parasitic disease in healthy individuals, can cause severe complications in immunocompromised persons and during pregnancy. The most common method to diagnose Toxoplasma gondii ...

In 2018, a cluster of pediatric human parechovirus (HPeV) infections in 2 neighboring German hospitals was detected. Viral protein 1 sequence analysis demonstrated co-circulation of different HPeV-3 sublineages and of ...

Understanding the complex interactions of microbial communities including bacteria, archaea, parasites, viruses and fungi of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) associated with states of either health or disease is still an ...

Strategies to reduce economic losses associated with post-weaning diarrhea in pig farming include high-level dietary zinc oxide supplementation. However, excessive usage of zinc oxide in the pig production sector was found ...

The investigation of microbial proteins by mass spectrometry (metaproteomics) is a key technology for simultaneously assessing the taxonomic composition and the functionality of microbial communities in medical, environmental, ...

Old world hantaviruses cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) upon zoonotic transmission to humans. In Europe, the Puumala virus (PUUV) is the main causative agent of HFRS. Tula virus (TULV) is also widely ...

Nanomaterials (NMs) can be produced in numerous different variants of the same chemical substance. An in-depth safety assessment for each variant by generating test data will simply not be feasible. Thus, NM grouping ...

Cell growth is well described at the population level, but precisely how nutrient and water uptake and cell wall expansion drive the growth of single cells is poorly understood. Supported by measurements of single-cell ...