RESUMEN
The world's most consequential pathogens occur in regions with the fewest diagnostic resources, leaving the true burden of these diseases largely under-represented. During a prospective observational study of sepsis in Takeo Province Cambodia, we enrolled 200 patients over an 18-month period. By coupling traditional diagnostic methods such as culture, serology, and PCR to Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and advanced statistical analyses, we successfully identified a pathogenic cause in 46.5% of our cohort. In all, we detected 25 infectious agents in 93 patients, including severe threat pathogens such as Burkholderia pseudomallei and viral pathogens such as Dengue virus. Approximately half of our cohort remained undiagnosed; however, an independent panel of clinical adjudicators determined that 81% of those patients had infectious causes of their hospitalization, further underscoring the difficulty of diagnosing severe infections in resource-limited settings. We garnered greater insight as to the clinical features of severe infection in Cambodia through analysis of a robust set of clinical data.
Asunto(s)
Sepsis/epidemiología , Sepsis/etiología , Sepsis/microbiología , Adulto , Anciano , Anciano de 80 o más Años , Bacterias/clasificación , Infecciones Bacterianas/diagnóstico , Infecciones Bacterianas/epidemiología , Cambodia/epidemiología , Femenino , Secuenciación de Nucleótidos de Alto Rendimiento , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , Reacción en Cadena de la Polimerasa , Estudios Prospectivos , Sepsis/virología , Análisis de Secuencia de ARN , Pruebas Serológicas , Virosis/diagnóstico , Virosis/epidemiología , Virus/clasificaciónRESUMEN
Melioidosis is a severe infectious disease caused by the gram-negative soil bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Melioidosis is well known to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand. However, melioidosis remains underreported in surrounding areas such as Cambodia. We report a case series of melioidosis in seven patients from Takeo Province, Cambodia. The patients, aged 24-65 years, were enrolled from May 2014 to May 2015 during a one year prospective study of sepsis at Takeo Provincial Hospital. They presented with fever, rigors, dyspnea, fatigue, diaphoresis, productive cough, and skin abscesses. Six of the seven patients were also hyponatremic. B. pseudomallei was cultured from the blood of six patients and the sputum of one patient. In this manuscript, we provide a detailed description of the clinical presentation, case management and laboratory confirmation of B. pseudomallei, as well as discuss the difficulties of identifying and treating melioidosis in low resource settings.
