Enteric Fever in Cambodia: Community Perceptions and Practices Concerning Disease Transmission and Treatment.

Enteric fever is a systemic bacterial infection in humans that is endemic in Cambodia and for which antibiotic resistance is increasingly reported. To guide public health programs, this qualitative study sought to explore community perceptions on transmission and treatment. Participant observation was carried out in hospital settings, pharmacies, and at a community level in Phnom Penh. In-depth interviews 39 and one focus group discussion were carried out with blood culture-confirmed enteric fever patients and purposively selected key informants. Informants were theoretically sampled based on initial themes identified using abductive analysis. Nvivo 11 was used for thematic coding. An urgent need to address health literacy concerning the transmission of enteric fever was identified, as lay informants did not link the disease and its symptoms to bacterial contamination of foods and drinks but rather to foods considered "bad" following humoral illness interpretations. As a result, lay informants considered recurrence of enteric fever preventable with appropriate dietary restrictions and Khmer traditional medicines. This study also reveals pluralistic health-care-seeking behavior. For initial and mild symptoms, patients preferred home treatment or traditional healing practices; limited household finances delayed treatment seeking. When symptoms persisted, patients first visited drug outlets or private practitioners, where they received a mix of nonessential medicines and one or more antibiotics often without prescription or confirmation of diagnosis. Inappropriate use of antibiotics was common and was related to diagnostic uncertainty and limited finances, factors which should be addressed during future efforts to improve the uptake of appropriate diagnostics and treatment of enteric fever.

Differing burden and epidemiology of non-Typhi Salmonella bacteremia in rural and urban Kenya, 2006-2009.

BACKGROUND: The epidemiology of non-Typhi Salmonella (NTS) bacteremia in Africa will likely evolve as potential co-factors, such as HIV, malaria, and urbanization, also change. METHODS: As part of population-based surveillance among 55,000 persons in malaria-endemic, rural and malaria-nonendemic, urban Kenya from 2006-2009, blood cultures were obtained from patients presenting to referral clinics with fever ≥38.0°C or severe acute respiratory infection. Incidence rates were adjusted based on persons with compatible illnesses, but whose blood was not cultured. RESULTS: NTS accounted for 60/155 (39%) of blood culture isolates in the rural and 7/230 (3%) in the urban sites. The adjusted incidence in the rural site was 568/100,000 person-years, and the urban site was 51/100,000 person-years. In both sites, the incidence was highest in children <5 years old. The NTS-to-typhoid bacteremia ratio in the rural site was 4.6 and in the urban site was 0.05. S. Typhimurium represented >85% of blood NTS isolates in both sites, but only 21% (urban) and 64% (rural) of stool NTS isolates. Overall, 76% of S. Typhimurium blood isolates were multi-drug resistant, most of which had an identical profile in Pulse Field Gel Electrophoresis. In the rural site, the incidence of NTS bacteremia increased during the study period, concomitant with rising malaria prevalence (monthly correlation of malaria positive blood smears and NTS bacteremia cases, Spearman's correlation, p = 0.018 for children, p = 0.16 adults). In the rural site, 80% of adults with NTS bacteremia were HIV-infected. Six of 7 deaths within 90 days of NTS bacteremia had HIV/AIDS as the primary cause of death assigned on verbal autopsy. CONCLUSIONS: NTS caused the majority of bacteremias in rural Kenya, but typhoid predominated in urban Kenya, which most likely reflects differences in malaria endemicity. Control measures for malaria, as well as HIV, will likely decrease the burden of NTS bacteremia in Africa.

[Pathology and physiology of microbes. IV. Economic and metabolic coefficients in assessing the functional states of Salmonella typhi]. / Patologiia i fiziologiia mikrobov. Soobshchenie IV. Ekonomicheskii i metabolicheskii koéffitsienty v otsenke funktsional'nykh sostoianii Salmonella typhi.

The study of economic and metabolic coefficients under different conditions of batch and continuous cultivation with the use of S. typhi, a facultative anaerobe, as a model has demonstrated that the functional state of the microbial population is determined by the phase of the development of the culture, the composition of the culture medium, the conditions of aeration and stirring, the concentration of the energy-providing substrate and the dilution rate in continuous cultivation. The economic coefficient with respect to the energy-providing substrate has been found to be the main characteristic of the functional state of the population: the high values of this characteristic correspond to the physiological state of the population. The decrease of the economic coefficient below a certain critical value is indicative of the pathological state of the population.