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Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is as old as the living planet, i.e. over 3 billion years ago when bacterial life emerged together with its biological warfare weapons, the antibiotics. Bacteria can readily develop a diverse array of antibiotic resistance mechanisms, including selection of mutants which produce modified low-affinity drug targets, exhibit reduced drug permeability or increased drug efflux. Another pathway is through acquisition of mobile genetic determinants of drug inactivating enzymes, target protection or bypass mechanisms. Antibiotic resistance has accelerated and spread across the community of human and animal bacteria following massive use of antibiotics for over half-a century in human and veterinary medicine and agriculture. Today, the increasing prevalence of resistance among many bacterial pathogens is no longer counter-balanced by the launching of innovative and active antibiotics. This imbalanced "arms race" undermines the escalating use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and increases the risk of therapeutic failure, drug side effets and excess costs of care. The accumulation of antibiotic resistance genes and their epidemic dissemination is fuelled by the selective pressure associated with excess and inappropriate use of antibiotics combined with insufficient infection prevention and control measures. Confronting this threat effectively requires new strategies to be implemented globally, nationally, and locally across all healthcare and agricultural sectors.

From the outset, the Department of Microbiology of Erasme Hospital has striven to offer to clinical teams a full range of high performance tests for diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic infections, including opportunistic infections. Furthermore, the laboratory has developed and made available cutting edge tools for the epidemiologic surveillance and outbreak investigation in support to the hospital infection control and antibiotic resistance control programmes. Research and development programmes have led to technological innovation in the fields of molecular virologic diagnosis, notably for HIV and herpes viruses, rapid bacterial identification, detection of resistance genes and epidemiological typing. Research in collaboration with clinical teams has focused on congenital infections, HIV infection, opportunistic infections and prevention of nosocomial infection. The Department acts as national reference laboratory for a number of infectious diseases and co-ordinates or actively participates to several European multicentre studies and epidemiologic surveillance networks.

Aim: This research was aimed at assessing the effects of pubertal maturation on the self-image of adolescents., Methods and Patients: Three components of self-image have been studied: body image (physical well-being, attractiveness and efficiency), perceived relations with peers of the opposite sex, and self-esteem. A sample of 159 French boys and girls aged from 11 to 16.3 years completed self-report scales and a semantic differential. Their pubertal status was measured by school physicians in terms of Tanner stages., Results: Correlational patterns indicated stronger reciprocal links between the different components of self-image in girls than in boys. Results from regression analyses confirmed that the impact of pubertal maturation on self-image is qualitatively very different between the two sexes.

To define prognostic factors of testicular cancer and to develop a strategic therapy based on clinical, pathological and biological findings, 77 cases of non seminomatous testis tumor, observed in G.F. Leclerc Center from 1967 to 1977, have been analysed. For all these patients early chemotherapy program was associated with surgery; radiation therapy was reserved for stages with retroperitoneal metastatic disease. Results of this review confirmed the interest of such medical treatment which improved survival in all stages of disease. Some prognostic factors could be detailed from these cases: nature of tumoral components, invading of lymph node, presence or not of biological markers; identification of these would unable us to choose the best adjuvant chemotherapy program and to define its place in the management of testis tumor's treatment.