Evaluation of an automated rapid urine culture method for urinary tract infection: Comparison with gold standard conventional culture method.

PURPOSE: Urinary tract infection is one of the most prevalent disease affecting people from all age groups. For its diagnosis, conventional culture and antibiotic susceptibility is the gold standard. However, its major limitation is that the results take minimum of 24 â€‹h and antibiotic susceptibility is available after 48 â€‹h. Automated culture methods having comparable sensitivity and specificity as compared to conventional culture should be evaluated for routine diagnostics. With this aim we evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of automated urine culture method HB&L uroquattro by comparing with the gold standard conventional culture method. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 1220 urine samples were included in the study. Semi-quantitative urine culture was performed using standard methods on cysteine lactose electrolyte deficient medium. For the automated culture, HB&L Uroquattro (Alifax, Polverara, PD, Italy), standard guidelines given in the manual of the instrument were followed. Diagnostic performance in terms of sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios, positive and negative predictive values were calculated. RESULTS: Based on the final interpretation of conventional culture for the total 1220 samples, 26 samples (2.1%) showed major non-concordance as they were identified as sterile by HB&L but had significant growth by conventional culture and 19.9% showed minor non-concordance. At 100-999 colony forming unit/ml, HB&L has high negative predictive value i.e. 96.6% with 95% CI (95.2%-97.6%) and sensitivity i.e. 92.66% with 95% CI of (89.42%-95.15%). CONCLUSION: The HB&L Uroquattro seems to be a reliable instrument to obtain urine microbiological results in a timely manner. This technique can give presumptive report to the clinician within 5 â€‹h only for initiation of empirical antibiotics in cases of positive results.

Antimicrobial resistance in Shigella species: Our five years (2015-2019) experience in a tertiary care center in north India.

PURPOSE: Shigella is the second leading cause of diarrhoeal mortality especially in children <5 years of age in African and Asian countries. Rapid changes are occurring in the epidemiology of shigellosis and Shigella are increasingly becoming highly drug resistant. To determine the serogroup distribution and antimicrobial resistance of Shigella isolated at our tertiary care centre in North India. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted where demographic details along with antimicrobial susceptibility data of Shigella isolated from stool specimens from 1st January 2015 till 31st December 2019 were retrieved from records and analyzed by WHONET 2019 software. RESULTS: Shigella species was isolated in 1.31% (n = 137) of a total of 10,456 stool samples. Males predominated (n = 82; 59.8%) and majority of cases were admitted (n = 94; 68.6%). Children ≤5 years of age (n = 47; 34.3%) were the most commonly affected. Adults in the 21-40 age group contributed 27% of cases (n = 37). Overall, Shigella flexneri (n = 87; 63.5%) was the most common serogroup followed by non-agglutinable Shigella (n = 28; 20.4%) while Shigella sonnei (n = 12, 8.8%) and Shigella boydii (n = 9, 6.6%) fluctuated over the years. Shigella dysenteriae reappeared in 2019 after a hiatus of ten years. Overall, 45.3% (n = 62) of isolates were multidrug resistant to CLSI recommended drugs and high resistance was noted for ampicillin/amoxicillin (68.1%), cotrimoxazole (75.8%) ciprofloxacin (61.5%) and ceftriaxone/cefotaxime (45.2%). CONCLUSIONS: Shigella have become highly drug resistant to fluoroquinolones and cephalosporins. Community based studies are required to truly assess the burden of AMR in India.