Internal Medicine Today
Volume:29 Issue: 2, Spring 2022

Nosocomial infections have always been a serious threat to hospitalized patients, and in recent years, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant isolates has aggravated the severity of this problem. The type and rate of bacteria causing nosocomial infection can vary across different geographical areas; therefore, it is of utmost importance to periodically check the type of infection and variations in the antibiotic resistance pattern of bacteria. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the variation in antimicrobial resistance patterns in bacteria isolated from patients with nosocomial infection hospitalized in Allameh Bohlool Gonabadi Hospital from 2017-2020.

The present cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 392 patients with nosocomial infection admitted to Allameh Bohllol Gonabadi Hospital from 2017-2020. The age and gender of the patients, the hospital department, the type of hospital infection, the cause of the infection, and the pattern of antibiotic resistance were extracted from the patient's files. Finally, all the data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 21) using descriptive statistical tests, and the variation in antimicrobial resistance pattern in bacteria isolated from patients with nosocomial infection was investigated.

Out of 44,204 examined patients, 392 cases had nosocomial infections. The rate of nosocomial infection was 0.88%. Ventilator-related pneumonia (32.14%), urinary infection (27.55%), and surgical site infection (20.15%) were the most common nosocomial infections. The highest rate of nosocomial infections was related to the intensive care unit. E. coli (17.6%), Klebsiella (12.2%), and Acinetobacter (10.9%) were the dominant pathogens causing nosocomial infections. The results regarding the variation in antibiotic resistance pattern demonstrated that the rate of antibiotic resistance and the frequency of isolates with multidrug resistance increased over four years. All the isolates showed 100% resistance to ampicillin. Gentamicin and amikacin were the most effective antibiotics used for gram-negative bacilli.

As evidenced by the obtained results, there was a significant increasing trend in the resistance of isolates to all studied antibiotics during these four years; moreover, the frequency of multidrug-resistant strains was also increasing. Furthermore, the marked increase in antibiotic resistance among isolates causing nosocomial infections in recent years is a serious risk. Therefore, a thorough knowledge of antibiotic resistance patterns can be of great help to physicians in selecting more appropriate antibiotics for treatment and preventing the development of antibiotic resistance.

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common dementias, which is initially characterized by synaptic damage and subsequently accompanied by neuronal loss and cognitive impairments, such as anxiety and depression. Urolithins are natural phenolic compounds found abundantly in the human diet and are catabolized from the hydrolysis of ellagitannins by the gut microbiota. They possess anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and have been found to be effective in brain disorders, particularly memory dysfunction. This study aimed to investigate the effect of Urolithin A and B administration on learning and memory impairments as well as anxiety-like behaviors in adult male rat models of Alzheimer’s disease.

In this experimental study, 70 adult male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 10 groups of seven, including the healthy control group, the Sham group: received streptozotocin solvent (ascorbic acid 0.1% in saline) as intracerebroventricular (ICV) injection and urolithins solvent (DMSO) as intraperitoneal (IP) injection, Positive control group: received streptozotocin as ICV injection and memantine as IP injection, Negative control group: received streptozotocin as ICV injection, Treatment groups 1 to 6: received streptozotocin as ICV injection and urolithin A and urolithin B as IP injection for 14 days. After the treatment period, the learning and memory of the rats were measured by the passive avoidance test, and the elevated plus maze test measured anxiety-like behaviors.

The results of statistical analysis using one-way variance test (ANOVA) and Tukey's post hoc test, performed in R software, showed that in the passive avoidance test, streptozotocin caused a significant impairment in learning and memory in the negative control group (P<0.01), while the treatment with urolithin A and B significantly improved memory performance, much better than the standard treatment (memantine) (P<0.05). Furthermore, the results of the elevated plus maze test also indicated a significant increase in anxiety-like behaviors in the negative control group compared to the control group (P<0.001), while the treatment with urolithin A and B significantly reduced these behaviors (P<0.01).

The results of this study indicated that urolithin A and B, probably due to their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, protected the brain against the effects of streptozotocin injection, and consequently, improved learning and memory performance and reduced anxiety-like behaviors.