Prevalence of mutations associated with macrolide and fluoroquinolone resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae with Allplex NG-DR Assay (Seegene) in a tertiary hospital from Madrid, Spain.

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) infections is increasing. Studies report the prevalence of NG strains presenting A2059G/C2611T (rRNA23S) and S91F (parC) mutations conferring resistance to azithromycin and ciprofloxacin. METHODS: We conducted a prospective cohort study evaluating first void-urine urines, rectal, and oropharyngeal swabs collected from a cohort of patients in a tertiary hospital in Madrid between October 2022 and January 2023. Samples were screened by Allplex 7-STI Essential Assay (Seegene). Drug resistances were performed by Allplex NG-DR Assay (Seegene). RESULTS: A total of 1,415 patients were included, of which 112 had a positive sample for NG infection. One patient had a C2611T mutation (0.9%) and neither patient showed A2059G mutation. We found 67 (59.8%) S91F-positive patients. Forty-four patients (39.3%) not had any mutations. CONCLUSIONS: We report a low-prevalence of mutations A2059G/C2611T to macrolides and a high-prevalence to S91F in NG infections. Molecular methods for the detection of NG resistance could be useful in direct non-culturable samples.

Epidemiology and prevalence of mutations associated with resistance to macrolides and fluoroquinolones in Mycoplasma genitalium in a tertiary hospital from Madrid, Spain.

OBJECTIVE: Mycoplasma genitalium causes persistent sexually transmitted infections. The aims of this study were to estimate the prevalence of resistances to macrolides and fluoroquinolones in M. genitalium and the sexually transmitted coinfections in patients at Hospital Universitario La Paz (Madrid, Spain). METHODS: Patients attended between January and October 2021 were studied. Screening for sexually transmitted pathogens and detection of 23S rRNA and parC genes mutations were performed by real-time PCR (Allplex,SeegeneTM). RESULTS: A total of 1,518 females and 1,136 males were studied. The prevalence of M. genitalium was 2.1%. The macrolides resistance rate was 51.8%. The mutations found were A2059G, A2058T and A2058G. The rate of resistance to fluoroquinolones was 17.8% being the G248T mutation (S83I) the most frequent. Seven males had some sexual transmitted coinfection. CONCLUSIONS: Although the percentage of M. genitalium infections is low, the high rate of resistance to macrolides makes it necessary to revise the protocols for diagnosis and empirical treatment of sexually transmitted infections. The use of fluoroquinolones is appropriate after screening of macrolide resistance profile.

Optimized identification of microorganisms directly from positive blood cultures by MALDI-TOF to improve antimicrobial treatment.

OBJECTIVE: Bacteriemia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients worldwide. Early identification of microorganisms from blood culture can lead to improvement of treatment and outcomes. METHODS: The study was divided into two phases. The first phase when a comparison of the methods was made to check the concordance between them, using as a reference the standard method implemented in the laboratory. In a second phase, both methods are combined. We used the rapid identification method and when it could not identify we used the standard method. The microorganisms that were not identified by either of the two methods were identified from colony at 24 hours. RESULTS: A total of 589 microbial positive blood cultures have been included in the present study. With the rapid method we obtained 96% and 88% identification results for Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) and Gram-positive cocci (GPC) respectively. In this study we observed that the combination of the rapid and standard method achieved identifications of 98% and 97% for GNB and GPC respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The data analysed shows that both methods combined perform better than individually. We achieved an optimization of the identification of microorganisms directly from positive blood cultures by MALDI-TOF. This combination identified 98% of the microorganisms in between ten minutes to one hour and a half since the blood culture flagged positive.