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Background: Global, regional and national estimates clearly place diarrhoeal diseases as a major, albeit to an extant neglected public health problem. Deaths of children aged <5 years owing to diarrhoea was estimated to be 1.87 million at the global level (uncertainty range from 1.56 to 2.19 million), which is approximately 19% of total child deaths. Objectives: The present report is a cross‑sectional study undertaken to estimate the role of various aetiological agents causing diarrhoea in North Karnataka and adjoining areas of Maharashtra and Goa. Methods: Three hundred stool samples were collected from patients seeking health care at KLES Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Belgaum; and processed for detection of various bacterial, viral and parasitic agents. Results: Bacterial pathogens attributed to 65.7% of diarrhoea cases, followed by viral infection (22%), parasitic infection (16.3%) and infection by Candida spp. (5.6%). The study identified Escherichia coli in general and Enteropathogenic E. coli in particular, and Group A Rotavirus to be the most frequently isolated pathogens among diarrhoea patients. Conclusion: The data generated from the current study will help the health officials for better interventional and treatment strategies for diarrhoeal diseases.
RESUMO
CONTEXT: Search for a cost-effective, rapid and accurate test has renewed interest in mycobacteriophage as a tool in the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). There has been no reported data on the performance of phage assay in a high burden, low-resource setting like Kanpur city, India. AIMS: To assess the sensitivity and specificity of the FASTPlaque TB kit ability to impact the bacillary load in the phage assay and its performance in the sputum smear sample negative cases. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study involved a cross-sectional blinded assessment of phage assay using the FASTPlaque TB kit on 68 suspected cases of pulmonary TB against sputum smear microscopy by Ziehl-Neilsen staining and culture by the LJ method. RESULTS: The sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values of the phage assay were 90.7, 96, 97.5 and 85.7%, respectively. The assay was negative in all the five specimens growing mycobacteria other than TB. The sensitivity of the phage assay tended to decrease with the bacillary load. Of the smear-negative cases, three were false negative, and all of which were detected by the phage assay. Smear microscopy (three smears per patient) had a sensitivity and specificity of 93 and 64%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The phage assay has the potential clinical utility as a simple means of rapid and accurate detection of live Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli; however, its performance has been inconsistent across various studies, which highlights that the assay requires a high degree of quality control demanding infrastructure and its performance is vulnerable to common adversities observed in "out of research" practice settings like storage, transport and cross-contamination.
RESUMO
One of the complications of brucellosis is infective endocarditis, which carries a high mortality rate if undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. We report a case of Brucella infective endocarditis, which was diagnosed serologically and by polymerase chain reaction. After Brucella specific treatment, patient showed dramatic improvement clinically, as evident by echocardiogram findings and other investigations.