Standards of care for patients with cystic fibrosis: a European consensus.
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Cystic Fibrosis↗
Biomedical subjects
Stuart Elborn
Publications and source records attributed to Stuart Elborn.
Progress towards gene therapy for cystic fibrosis.
A decade ago it was widely anticipated that cystic fibrosis would be one of the first diseases to be treated by gene therapy. The difficult hurdle of cloning the responsible gene had been accomplished, its function was established and the lung appeared readily accessible for gene replacement. Since the first clinical trials for cystic fibrosis lung disease in the early 1990s it has become increasingly apparent that successful lung-directed gene therapy is significantly more complex than was first envisioned. Numerous obstacles including vector toxicity, inefficient transgene expression and limited vector production have delayed progress. An increased understanding of vector biology and host interaction has led to the development of novel strategies to enhance the efficiency and selectivity of gene delivery to the lung. Although significant challenges remain, there is now a realistic prospect of a clinically effective treatment in the next 10 years.
Adenoviridae↗
Development of a rapid colorimetric time-kill assay for determining the in vitro activity of ceftazidime and tobramycin in combination against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
It is standard clinical practice to use a combination of two or more antimicrobial agents to treat an infection caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The antibiotic combinations are usually selected empirically with methods to determine the antimicrobial effect of the combination such as the time-kill assay rarely used as they are time-consuming and labour intensive to perform. Here, we report a modified time-kill assay, based on the reduction of the tetrazolium salt, 2,3-bis[2-methyloxy-4-nitro-5-sulfophenyl]-2H-tetrazolium-5-carboxanilide (XTT), that allows simple, inexpensive and more rapid determination of the in vitro activity of antibiotic combinations against P. aeruginosa. The assay was used to determine the in vitro activity of ceftazidime and tobramycin in combination against P. aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis patients and the results obtained compared with those from conventional viable count time-kill assays. There was good agreement in interpretation of results obtained by the XTT and conventional viable count assays, with similar growth curves apparent and the most effective concentration combinations determined by both methods identical for all isolates tested. The XTT assay clearly indicated whether an antibiotic combination had a synergistic, indifferent or antagonistic effect and could, therefore, provide a useful method for rapidly determining the activity of a large number of antibiotic combinations against clinical isolates.
Anti-Bacterial Agents↗