Introduction: The incidence of fungal infections has increased significantly in the recent times contributing to high rates of morbidity and mortality. Although being the normal flora of various parts of human body, Candida species are recognized as a major fungal pathogen causing both superficial and deep-seated infection in immunosuppressed patients. Increase in antimicrobial resistance recently has rendered treatment difficult due to restricted number of antifungal drugs. Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study done for a period of 18 months at a tertiary care center. Ethical clearance was obtained from Institutional Review Committee with a referece number (UCMS/IRC/036/18). Two hundred isolates of Candida species were identified from various clinical samples by using phenotypic tests such as CHROM agar, sugar fermentation test, sugar assimilation test and germ tube test. Antifungal susceptibility test was performed for five drugs namely ketoconazole (10µg), fluconazole (10µg), itraconazole (10µg), nystatin (100µg) and amphotericin-B(20µg). All the statistical evaluation was done by using SPSS version 20.0 software (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Results: Among 200 isolates of Candida, the most frequently isolated species was C.albicanswhich was seen in 69% of total isolates followed by C.tropicalis, C.krusei, and C.dubliniensis. Maximum Candida isolates were from urine sample (41.5%) followed by sputum (22.5%). Amphotericin –B was found to be the most sensitive drug with a sensitivity of 97.1% whereas ketoconazole was the least sensitive drug with a sensitivity of 40.5% among the isolates. Conclusion: C.albicans were the major isolates in this study, however, there is an increased incidence of non- albicans Candida species. Antifungal susceptibility test revealed increased resistance to different antifungal drugs among Candida species. This may conclude that increase in resistant strains may lead to difficult management of Candida infection as there are very few antifungal agents available.

Background: Enterococcus an important uropathogen has appeared to be of great therapeutic challenge globally due to its intrinsic and acquired resistance to multiple antibiotics. High level aminoglycoside and vancomycin resistant Enterococcus has narrowed the treatment options. Thus, the aim of this study was to detect the current antibiogram trend of Enterococcus species isolated from urine samples. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in urine sample of patients attending Gandaki Medical College Teaching Hospital from September 2021 to May 2022. Ethical clearance was obtained from Institutional Review Committee. Enterococcus species was isolated and antibiotic susceptibility test was performed by Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method. Simple random sampling was done and data was analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. Results: A total of 61 (10.62 %) Enterococcus species were isolated from 574 culture positive urine samples. Enterococcus isolates were highly susceptible to linezolid 60 (98.4%), vancomycin 56 (91.8%) and nitrofurantoin 50 (82.0%) whereas less susceptible to ampicillin 16 (26.2%). Multidrug resistant Enterococcus was identified commonly from 25 (73.5%) in-patients. Nitrofurantoin was sensitive among 4 (80.0%) vancomycin resistant isolates. Only 4 (16.0%) Enterococcal isolates were sensitive to both ampicillin and high-level gentamicin. Conclusions: Emergence of multidrug resistant Enterococcus in our institution is worrisome. Nitrofurantoin remains a useful drug and shows high efficacy in vitro against emerging vancomycin resistant isolates. Combination of ampicillin and high-level gentamicin is used to treat complicated urinary tract infection; however, it seems less effective in our scenario.

Human thelaziasis is an emerging insect-borne zoonotic ocular parasitic infestation, occur more commonly in rural communities with poor living and low socioeconomic living, and mainly affects the children and old age people, where humans live in close proximity with animals. Human thelaziasis is caused by both Thelazia callipaeda and Thelazia californiensis. T. callipaeda lives under the eye lids, nictitating membranes, orbit, conjunctival sac, lachrymal glands, and lacrimal ducts of cats, dogs, rabbits, horses, cattle, deer, badgers, monkeys, wolves, foxes (definitive hosts) and man being an accidental host. The vectors (intermediate hosts) are non-biting, tear-seeking, diptera flies of family Drosophilidae (fruit flies) Phortica variegata, which feeds on tears of their definitive hosts, including humans. Clinical manifestations include conjunctivitis, lacrimation, itching or pain with foreign body sensation, epiphora, follicular hypertrophy, and less often with severe signs and symptoms such as keratitis, photophobia, ectropion, corneal opacities (due to the migration of worm across the cornea), floaters within the eye chamber leading to visual impairment/blindness. The knowledge and scientific information on human thelaziasis is still unknown or relatively limited to many ophthalmologists and clinicians, and received little attention; hence this comprehensive and systematic review of human thelaziasis, is undertaken to highlight its importance and further research.

Information is given about the cabbage butterfly [ Pieris rapae ], a pest of cabbages [ Brassica oleracea var. capitata ], cauliflowers [ B. oleracea var. botrytis ], broccoli [ B. oleracea var. italica ] and other brassicas [ Brassica ]. WVI, Lalitpur