High performance of systematic combined urine LAM test and sputum Xpert MTB/RIF® for tuberculosis screening in severely immunosuppressed ambulatory adults with HIV.

BACKGROUND: In people with HIV (PWH), the WHO-recommended tuberculosis four-symptom screen (W4SS) targeting those who need molecular rapid test may be suboptimal. We assessed the performance of different tuberculosis screening approaches in severely immunosuppressed PWH enrolled in the guided-treatment group of the STATIS trial (NCT02057796). METHODS: Ambulatory PWH with no overt evidence of tuberculosis and CD4 cell count <100/µL were screened for tuberculosis prior to antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation with W4SS, chest X-ray, urine lipoarabinomannan (LAM) test and sputum Xpert MTB/RIF® (Xpert). Correctly and wrongly identified cases by screening approaches were assessed overall and by CD4 count threshold (≤50 and 51-99 cells/µL). RESULTS: Of 525 enrolled participants (median CD4 cell count: 28/µL), 48 (9.9%) were diagnosed with tuberculosis at enrollment. Among participants with a negative W4SS, 16% had either a positive Xpert, a chest X-ray suggestive of tuberculosis or a positive urine LAM test. The combination of sputum Xpert and urine LAM test was associated with the highest proportion of participants correctly identified as tuberculosis (95.8%) and non-tuberculosis cases (95.4%), with proportions equally high among participants with CD4 counts above or below 50 cells/µL. Restricting the use of sputum Xpert, urine LAM test or chest X-ray to participants with a positive W4SS reduced the proportion of wrongly and correctly identified cases. CONCLUSIONS: There is a clear benefit to perform both sputum Xpert and urine LAM tests as tuberculosis screening in all severely immunosuppressed PWH prior to ART initiation, and not only in those with a positive W4SS. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION: NCT02057796.

Dexamethasone for the treatment of tuberculous meningitis in adolescents and adults.

BACKGROUND: Tuberculous meningitis kills or disables more than half of those affected with the disease. Previous studies have been too small to determine whether adjunctive treatment with corticosteroids can reduce the risk of disability or death among adults with tuberculous meningitis, and the effect of coinfection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is unclear. METHODS: We performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in Vietnam in patients over 14 years of age who had tuberculous meningitis, with or without HIV infection, to determine whether adjunctive treatment with dexamethasone reduced the risk of death or severe disability after nine months of follow-up. We conducted prespecified subgroup analyses and intention-to-treat analyses. RESULTS: A total of 545 patients were randomly assigned to groups that received either dexamethasone (274 patients) or placebo (271 patients). Only 10 patients (1.8 percent) had been lost to follow-up at nine months of treatment. Treatment with dexamethasone was associated with a reduced risk of death (relative risk, 0.69; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.52 to 0.92; P=0.01). It was not associated with a significant reduction in the proportion of severely disabled patients (34 of 187 patients [18.2 percent] among survivors in the dexamethasone group vs. 22 of 159 patients [13.8 percent] in the placebo group, P=0.27) or in the proportion of patients who had either died or were severely disabled after nine months (odds ratio, 0.81; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.58 to 1.13; P=0.22). The treatment effect was consistent across subgroups that were defined by disease-severity grade (stratified relative risk of death, 0.68; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.52 to 0.91; P=0.007) and by HIV status (stratified relative risk of death, 0.78; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.59 to 1.04; P=0.08). Significantly fewer serious adverse events occurred in the dexamethasone group than in the placebo group (26 of 274 patients vs. 45 of 271 patients, P=0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Adjunctive treatment with dexamethasone improves survival in patients over 14 years of age with tuberculous meningitis but probably does not prevent severe disability.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineage influences innate immune response and virulence and is associated with distinct cell envelope lipid profiles.

The six major genetic lineages of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are strongly associated with specific geographical regions, but their relevance to bacterial virulence and the clinical consequences of infection are unclear. Previously, we found that in Vietnam, East Asian/Beijing and Indo-Oceanic strains were significantly more likely to cause disseminated tuberculosis with meningitis than those from the Euro-American lineage. To investigate this observation we characterised 7 East Asian/Beijing, 5 Indo-Oceanic and 6 Euro-American Vietnamese strains in bone-marrow-derived macrophages, dendritic cells and mice. East Asian/Beijing and Indo-Oceanic strains induced significantly more TNF-α and IL-1ß from macrophages than the Euro-American strains, and East Asian/Beijing strains were detectable earlier in the blood of infected mice and grew faster in the lungs. We hypothesised that these differences were induced by lineage-specific variation in cell envelope lipids. Whole lipid extracts from East Asian/Beijing and Indo-Oceanic strains induced higher concentrations of TNF-α from macrophages than Euro-American lipids. The lipid extracts were fractionated and compared by thin layer chromatography to reveal a distinct pattern of lineage-associated profiles. A phthiotriol dimycocerosate was exclusively produced by East Asian/Beijing strains, but not the phenolic glycolipid previously associated with the hyper-virulent phenotype of some isolates of this lineage. All Indo-Oceanic strains produced a unique unidentified lipid, shown to be a phenolphthiocerol dimycocerosate dependent upon an intact pks15/1 for its production. This was described by Goren as the 'attenuation indictor lipid' more than 40 years ago, due to its association with less virulent strains from southern India. Mutation of pks15/1 in a representative Indo-Oceanic strain prevented phenolphthiocerol dimycocerosate synthesis, but did not alter macrophage cytokine induction. Our findings suggest that the early interactions between M. tuberculosis and host are determined by the lineage of the infecting strain; but we were unable to show these differences are driven by lineage-specific cell-surface expressed lipids.

Dexamethasone and long-term outcome of tuberculous meningitis in Vietnamese adults and adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Dexamethasone has been shown to reduce mortality in patients with tuberculous meningitis but the long-term outcome of the disease is unknown. METHODS: Vietnamese adults and adolescents with tuberculous meningitis recruited to a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of adjunctive dexamethasone were followed-up at five years, to determine the effect of dexamethasone on long-term survival and neurological disability. RESULTS: 545 patients were randomised to receive either dexamethasone (274 patients) or placebo (271 patients). 50 patients (9.2%) were lost to follow-up at five years. In all patients two-year survival, probabilities tended to be higher in the dexamethasone arm (0.63 versus 0.55; p = 0.07) but five-year survival rates were similar (0.54 versus 0.51, p = 0.51) in both groups. In patients with grade 1 TBM, but not with grade 2 or grade 3 TBM, the benefit of dexamethasone treatment tended to persist over time (five-year survival probabilities 0.69 versus 0.55, p = 0.07) but there was no conclusive evidence of treatment effect heterogeneity by TBM grade (p = 0.36). The dexamethasone group had a similar proportion of severely disabled patients among survivors at five years as the placebo group (17/128, 13.2% vs. 17/116, 14.7%) and there was no significant association between dexamethasone treatment and disability status at five years (p = 0.32). CONCLUSIONS: Adjunctive dexamethasone appears to improve the probability of survival in patients with TBM, until at least two years of follow-up. We could not demonstrate a five-year survival benefit of dexamethasone treatment which may be confined to patients with grade 1 TBM. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01317654.