Comparison of novel rapid diagnostic of blood culture identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing by Accelerate Pheno system and BioFire FilmArray Blood Culture Identification and BioFire FilmArray Blood Culture Identification 2 panels.

BACKGROUND: Conventional turnaround time (TAT) for positive blood culture (PBC) identification (ID) and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) is 2-3 days. We evaluated the TAT and ID/AST performance using clinical and seeded samples directly from PBC bottles with different commercial approaches: (1) Accelerate Pheno® system (Pheno) for ID/AST; (2) BioFire® FilmArray® Blood Culture Identification (BCID) Panel and/ or BCID2 for ID; (3) direct AST by VITEK® 2 (direct AST); and (4) overnight culture using VITEK® 2 colony AST. RESULTS: A total of 141 PBC samples were included in this evaluation. Using MALDI-TOF (Bruker MALDI Biotyper) as the reference method for ID, the overall monomicrobial ID sensitivity/specificity are as follows: Pheno 97.9/99.9%; BCID 100/100%; and BCID2 100/100%, respectively. For AST performance, broth microdilution (BMD) was used as the reference method. For gram-negatives, overall categorical and essential agreements (CA/EA) for each method were: Pheno 90.3/93.2%; direct AST 92.6/88.5%; colony AST 94.4/89.5%, respectively. For gram-positives, the overall CA/EAs were as follows: Pheno 97.2/98.89%; direct AST 97.2/100%; colony AST 97.2/100%, respectively. The BCID/BCID2 and direct AST TATs were around 9-20 h (1/9-19 h for ID with resistance markers/AST), with 15 min/sample hands-on time. In comparison, Pheno TATs were around 8-10 h (1.5/7 h for ID/AST) with 2 min/sample hands-on time, maintains a clinically relevant fast report of antibiotic minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and allows for less TAT and hands-on time. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study conducted as such in Asia; all studied approaches achieved satisfactory performance, factors such as TAT, panel of antibiotics choices and hands-on time should be considered for the selection of appropriate rapid ID and AST of PBC methods in different laboratory settings.

Complementary use of MALDI-TOF MS and real-time PCR-melt curve analysis for rapid identification of methicillin-resistant staphylococci and VRE.

OBJECTIVES: To develop a rapid method for routine screening of methicillin-resistant staphylococci and VRE for clinical isolates and positive blood cultures. METHODS: Our method consisted of two parts: MALDI-TOF MS was used for identification of staphylococci and enterococci, followed by antibiotic resistance detection by real-time PCR-melt curve analysis without DNA extraction. The latter part included a triplex reaction for staphylococcal culture isolates (mecA, mecALGA251 and Panton-Valentine leucocidin genes), dual PCR of mecA/mecALGA251 and nuc genes for staphylococcal blood cultures, and a duplex reaction for enterococci (vanA and vanB genes). A total of 124 clinical isolates and 56 positive blood cultures were tested. MALDI-TOF MS was performed using Microflex LT (Bruker Daltonik, Bremen, Germany) and Rotor-Gene Q (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) was used for real-time PCR-melt curve analysis. The total assay time was <2.5 h. RESULTS: The results revealed 100% concordance with antibiotic susceptibility testing or other reference methods for all culture isolates and enterococcal blood cultures. The percentage of concordance for staphylococcal blood cultures was 97.5%. CONCLUSIONS: The method described herein was fast, economical, reliable and capable of detecting mecALGA251, vanB1 and vanB2 genotypes, which are not included in most commercial assays. Large-scale screening is required to further test the performance of this protocol, especially for genotypes that are infrequently encountered.

Ocular demodicidosis as a risk factor of adult recurrent chalazion.

PURPOSE: To report Demodex infestation in adult recurrent chalazion and its clinical response to weekly lid scrub with 50% tea tree oil (TTO) and daily lid scrub with tea tree shampoo. METHODS: This is a retrospective review of 30 adult patients (48 eyes) who presented with recurrent chalazion within 6 months after conventional treatment. Demodex was detected by random lash sampling and microscopic examination. Patients with confirmed ocular Demodex infestation were treated with weekly lid scrub with 50% TTO and daily lid scrub with tea tree shampoo. The study is limited by the lack of a control group. RESULTS: The mean age of patients was 39.1 ± 10.2 years (range 18-69). The mean follow-up of patients is 10.0 ± 3.0 months (range 6-24 months). Among 48 eyes with recurrent chalazion, Demodex mites were found in 35 (72.9%). Recurrent chalazion was found to be associated with ocular demodicidosis (Fisher exact test, p = 0.017). Tea tree oil treatment was given to 31 eyes with recurrent chalazion associated with Demodex infestation. Among the treatment group, all cases except one had no recurrence after the TTO treatment. The success rate of preventing recurrence is 96.8%. Treatment of TTO was found to be associated with preventing recurrence of chalazion associated with Demodex infestation (Fisher exact test, p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: The possibility of demodicidosis should be considered in adults presenting with recurrent chalazia. Tea tree oil eyelid scrubs is an effective treatment in preventing recurrence.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry for identification of clinically significant bacteria that are difficult to identify in clinical laboratories.

AIMS: Although the revolutionary matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has been evaluated for identification of various groups of bacteria, its application in bacteria that are 'difficult-to-identify' by phenotypic tests has been less well studied. We aim to evaluate the usefulness of MALDI-TOF MS for identification of 'difficult-to-identify' bacterial isolates. METHODS: We evaluated the performance of the Bruker MALDI-TOF MS system for a collection of 67 diverse clinically important bacterial isolates that were less commonly encountered, possessed ambiguous biochemical profiles or belonged to newly discovered species. The results were compared with 16S rRNA gene sequencing as a reference method for species identification. RESULTS: Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing as the reference method, 30 (45%) isolates were identified correctly to species level (score ≥2.0), 20 (30%) were only identified to genus level (score ≥1.7), four (6%) were misidentified (incorrect species with score ≥2.0 or incorrect genus with score ≥1.7) and 13 (19%) showed 'no identification' (score <1.7). Aerobic Gram-positive bacteria showed the highest percentage of correct species identification, followed by aerobic Gram-negative, anaerobic Gram-positive and anaerobic Gram-negative bacteria. Sixteen isolates identified to genus level actually showed the correct species but with scores below the threshold for species identification. Most isolates which showed 'no identification' were due to the absence of the corresponding species in the Bruker database. CONCLUSIONS: Expansion of commercial databases to include reference spectra of less commonly encountered and newly discovered species and to increase available spectra for each species is required to improve the accuracy of MALDI-TOF MS for identifying 'difficult-to-identify' bacteria.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation-time of flight mass spectrometry for rapid identification of Laribacter hongkongensis.

Laribacter hongkongensis is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, motile, S-shaped, urease-positive bacillus associated with invasive infections in liver cirrhosis patients and community-acquired gastroenteritis. Most cases of L hongkongensis infections occur in eastern countries. Information is lacking on the usefulness of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) for the identification of bacteria important in eastern countries. Using the Bruker database extended with 21 L hongkongensis reference strains, all 240 L hongkongensis isolates recovered from patients, fish, frogs and water were correctly identified, with 224 (93.3%) strains having top match scores ≥2.0. Notably, the strain of Chromobacterium violaceum was not reliably identified although it is included in the database. MALDI-TOF MS is useful for the accurate routine identification of L hongkongensis after adding reference L hongkongensis main spectra to the database. The number of strains for each species in MALDI-TOF MS databases should be expanded to cover intraspecies variability.