Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is an important cause of mortality worldwide. It accounts for approximately half of all deaths from cardiovascular disease. While coronary artery disease and acute myocardial infarction account for the majority of SCD in the elderly population, inherited cardiac diseases (inherited CDs) comprise a substantial proportion of younger SCD victims with a significant genetic component. Currently, the use of next-generation sequencing enables the rapid analysis to investigate relationships between genetic variants and inherited CDs causing SCD. Genetic contribution to risk has been considered an alternate predictor of SCD. In the past years, large numbers of SCD susceptibility variants were reported, but these results are scattered in numerous publications. Here, we present the SCD-associated Variants Annotation Database (SVAD) to facilitate the interpretation of variants and to meet the needs of data integration. SVAD contains data from a broad screening of scientific literature. It was constructed to provide a comprehensive collection of genetic variants along with integrated information regarding their effects. At present, SVAD has accumulated 2,292 entries within 1,239 variants by manually surveying pertinent literature, and approximately one-third of the collected variants are pathogenic/likely-pathogenic following the ACMG guidelines. To the best of our knowledge, SVAD is the most comprehensive database that can provide integrated information on the associated variants in various types of inherited CDs. SVAD represents a valuable source of variant information based on scientific literature and benefits clinicians and researchers, and it is now available on http:// svad.mbc.nctu.edu.tw/.

Background: A probable outbreak of respiratory disease in a nursing home serving exclusively patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) resulted in hospitalization of eight patients. Methods: Microbes from all PVS patients’ respiratory tracks and environments were surveyed by microbiological methods. Major pathogenic microbes were analyzed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Results: 24 PVS patients were investigated. Half were colonized with at least four different pathogenic microbes in their respiratory tracts. The most prevalent microbes were Pseudomonas aeruginosa in 15 patients (62.5%), Serratia marcescens in 14 (58.3%), Citrobacter koseri in nine (37.5%), Streptococcus pneumoniae in six (25%), and Proteus mirabilis in five (20.8%). By PFGE analysis, one major pulsotype each was identified for S. marcescens (92.9%, 13/14) and S. pneumoniae (100%, 6/6), whereas diverse pulsotypes were identified for P. aeruginosa, C. koseri, and P. mirabilis. Both major pulsotypes for S. marcescens and S. pneumoniae were also found in strains from patients outside the nursing home. No environmental reservoir was found for prevalent microbes. Conclusions: Clonal transmission of S. marcescens and S. pneumoniae among PVS patients in the nursing home was evident, indicating a need to enforce control measures to reduce threats to this type of facility.