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Escherichia albertii is a recently recognized human enteropathogen that is closely related to Escherichia coli. As E. albertii sometimes causes outbreaks of gastroenteritis, rapid strain typing systems, such as the O- and H-serotyping systems widely used for E. coli, will be useful for outbreak investigation and surveillance. Although an O-genotyping system has recently been developed, the diversity of E. albertii H-antigens (flagellins) encoded by fliC genes remains to be systematically investigated, and no H-serotyping or genotyping system is currently available. Here, we analyzed the fliC genes of 243 genome-sequenced E. albertii strains and identified 73 sequence types, which were grouped into four clearly distinguishable types designated E. albertii H-genotypes 1–4 (EAHg1–EAHg4). Although there was a clear sign of intraspecies transfer of fliC genes in E. albertii, none of the four E. albertii H-genotypes (EAHgs) were closely related to any of the 53 known E. coli H-antigens, indicating the absence or rare occurrence of interspecies transfer of fliC genes between the two species. Although the analysis of more E. albertii strains will be required to confirm the low level of variation in their fliC genes, this finding suggests that E. albertii may exist in limited natural hosts or environments and/or that the flagella of E. albertii may function in a limited stage(s) in their life cycle. Based on the fliC sequences of the four EAHgs, we developed a multiplex PCR-based H-genotyping system for E. albertii (EAH-genotyping PCR), which will be useful for epidemiological studies of E. albertii infections.

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y. 4 Li X, Xu X, Zhang Q et al. Diffusion weighted imaging and blood oxygen level-dependent MR imaging of kidneys in patients with lupus nephritis.

Purpose: Patients with strong pulmonary vascular occlusive lesions are at risk of developing postoperative pulmonary hypertension (PH). We aimed to evaluate preoperative right ventricular (RV) function in patients with ventricular septal defect (VSD) who required cardiac surgery during infancy and consequently developed postoperative PH and to determine whether we could preliminarily evaluate postoperative PH in these patients.Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 55 infants with VSD who underwent cardiac surgery between March 2014 and April 2020. We evaluated the measurements of preoperative atrial/ventricular general function and 2D atrial/ventricular strain between these two groups: a group with postoperative PH (post-PH) and a group without postoperative PH (post-NPH). Results: Post-PH patients had a significantly lower tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) (11.2 mm) and TAPSERA (the proportion of TAPSE due to RA contraction alone) (6.6 mm) than the post-NPH patients (14.1 mm, 8.5 mm). Furthermore, the post-PH group had a significantly lower peak right atrial (RA) longitudinal strain (PRALS) (31.0%) than the post-NPH group (43.0%). Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified that PRALS and TAPSERA were independent echocardiographic parameters for the presence of post-PH. The sensitivity and specificity of predicting post-PH for ≤38% of the PRALS were 83.0% and 100.0%, respectively, with an area under the curve of 0.94 (p < 0.01).Conclusion: Preoperative RA function and RV diastolic function decreased in the post-PH group. The RA strain and TAPSERA could be useful factors for predicting postoperative PH.