Nordic guidelines 2021 for diagnosis and treatment of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms

BACKGROUND

The diagnostic work-up and treatment of patients with gastroenteropancreatic (GEP) neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN) has undergone major advances and new methods are introduced. Furthermore, an update of the WHO classification has resulted in a new nomenclature for GEP-NEN that is implemented in the clinic.

AIM

These Nordic guidelines summarise the Nordic Neuroendocrine Tumour Group's current view on how to diagnose and treat GEP-NEN patients and aims to be useful in the daily practice for clinicians.

Rapid identification of Erwinia amylovora and Pseudomonas syringae species and characterization of E. amylovora streptomycin resistance using quantitative PCR assays

Erwinia amylovora and Pseudomonas syringae are bacterial phytopathogens responsible for considerable yield losses in commercial pome fruit production. The pathogens, if left untreated, can compromise tree health and economically impact entire commercial fruit productions. Historically, the choice of effective control methods has been limited. The use of antibiotics was proposed as an effective control method. The identification of these pathogens and screening for the presence of antibiotic resistance is paramount in the adoption and implementation of disease control methods. Molecular tests have been developed and accepted for identification and characterization of these disease-causing organisms. We improved existing molecular tests by developing methods that are equal or superior in robustness for identifying E. amylovora or P. syringae while being faster to execute. In addition, the real-time PCR-based detection method for E. amylovora provided complementary information on the susceptibility or resistance to streptomycin of individual isolates. Finally, we describe a methodology and results that compare the aggressiveness of the different bacterial isolates on four apple cultivars. We show that bacterial isolates exhibit different behaviors when brought into contact with various apple varieties and that the hierarchical clustering of symptom severity indicates a population structure, suggesting a genetic basis for host cultivar specificity.