This month
The new IDSA guidelines for the treatment of invasive aspergillosis were released this month and added to the diagnosis section of this website.
IDSA Clinical Practice Guidelines are the recognized standard for clinical practice in the infectious diseases community and these latest guidelines are intended to summarize the current evidence for treatment of different forms of aspergillosis.
Aspergillus website 10th anniversary
This year marks the tenth year that the Aspergillus website has been running and we are marking the occasion with a series of events beginning with a symposium on the 3rd March 2008 for sponsors, invited friends and patients along with Trustees of both the Fungal Research Trust and the Aspergillus Trust.
Talks from Prof. David Denning (Chief medical editor) and website team members Dr Graham Atherton and Dr Jennifer Bartholomew will provide the first session concentrating on the history and progress of the website and will illustrate some of its content.
Enquire here. Further events to be announced.
Latest News and Articles
There have been 37 additions to the articles section. This has been a very fruitful month for major reviews. We have picked out a few of the highlights here:
The current status of species recognition and identification in Aspergillus (Review subsection)
A historical overview of the taxonomic concepts starting with the monograph
of Raper & Fennell (1965) is given. A list of taxa described since 2000 is provided. Physiological characters, particularly growth rates and the production of extrolites, often
show differences that reflect phylogenetic species boundaries and greater emphasis should be placed on extrolite profiles and growth characteristics in species descriptions.
Multilocus sequence-based phylogenetic analyses have emerged as the primary tool for inferring phylogenetic species boundaries and relationships within subgenera and
sections. A four locus DNA sequence study covering all major lineages in Aspergillus using genealogical concordance theory resulted in a species recognition system that
agrees in part with phenotypic studies and reveals the presence of many undescribed species not resolved by phenotype.
Aspergillus species identification in the clinical setting (Review subsection)
Multiple recent studies have demonstrated the limited utility of morphological methods used singly for species identification of clinically relevant aspergilli. It is
being increasingly recognised that comparative sequence based methods used in conjunction with traditional phenotype based methods can offer better resolution of species
within this genus.
Specific recommendations of this working group include the use
of the ITS regions for inter section level identification and the β-tubulin locus for identification of individual species within the various Aspergillus sections.
Mycobank
An excellent resource aimed at recording all existing names for aspergillus species and includes basic data used to identify the species. If you think you have a new species enter it here!
Outbreak Worldwide Database
A brand new database in which all nosocomial disease outbreaks are being documented beginning with one thousand cases gleaned from Pubmed papers. The database is completely searchable and currently contains details of 24 outbreaks of aspergillosis.
Enzyme may provide treatment for gluten intolerance
 An enzyme produced by Aspergillus niger has been shown to efficiently degrade gluten in the laboratory under conditions similar to those found in a human stomach. Experiments are underway to test if the addition of this enzyme (a prolyl endoprotease) to food will reduce gluten toxicity.
Diagnosis
Four new articles have been added to the diagnosis section. One of these is entitled: "Contribution of the (1-> 3)-{beta}-D-Glucan Assay for the Diagnosis of Invasive Fungal Infections".
A renewed diagnosis section is coming shortly to take advantage of this new resource, but they can all be accessed in the current section in the meantime.
Library
Expansion of our library continues. First we added a section listing all of our available reviews and now we have provided a section devoted to taxonomic resources containing 15 new articles
Educational
Many slide presentations from the recent 3rd Advances in Aspergillosis Conference 2008 are available to view in the Educational Materials section
Medical
Images
 Histology images of a sputum plug and lung biopsy from an ABPA patient showing the presence of Charcot-Leyden crystals in both the sputum and tissue.
Also added is a chest X-ray and sputum sample from a patient with chronic cavitary pulmonary aspergillosis, with an aspergilloma and haemoptysis.
Conference Abstracts
The conference abstracts, most with full posters from the recent 3rd Advances against Aspergillosis meeting in Miami, on January 16-19th, are available in the conference abstracts section under AAA 3rd.
Laboratory Protocols
A new standard procedure for Microsatellite typing of Aspergillus fumigatus can be seen in the Laboratory Protocols section.
Searching the website
We now have a dedicated Google Search Appliance for this website. This means you can search the Aspergillus website using Google and it will include nearly all documents on the website (pdf, doc, ppt, html, php etc). and will include parts of the secure sections and eventually index images - a big improvement on earlier search facilites. Try it out here.
HonCode
 Health on the Net Foundation (HonCode) are the formost accrediation service for health-oriented websites. The Aspergillus website has been accredited since 1999 and this has once again been reaffirmed after the latest review in August 2007
RSS
Download our updates and articles automatically every time we add to those pages- no need to wait for the next newsletter. Use RSS.
What is RSS and how do I use it? Get help here.
Thanks for reading!
Visit our website again soon.
The Aspergillus Team. |
