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We developed a flow cytometry (FC) assay enabling the rapid and accurate identification of bacterial and viral infections using whole blood samples. The streamlined flow cytometry assay is designed to be user-friendly, making it accessible even for operators with limited experience in FC techniques. The key components of the assay focus on the expression levels of specific surface markers—CD64 on polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) as a marker for bacterial infection, and CD169 on monocytes (MO) for viral infection. The strong performance indicated by an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.94 for both PMN CD64 positive predictive value (PPV) 97.96% and negative predictive value (NPV) 76.67%, and MO CD169 PPV 82.6% and NPV 86.9%, highlight the assay's robustness in differentiating between bacterial and viral infections accurately. The FC assay includes the assessment of immune system status through HLA-DR and IL-1R2 modulation in MO, providing a useful insight into the patients' immune response. The significant increase in the frequency of MO exhibiting reduced HLA-DR expression and elevated IL-1R2 levels in infected patients (compared to healthy controls) underscores the potential of these markers as indicators of infection severity. Although the overall correlation between HLA-DR and IL-1R2 expression levels was not significant across all patients, there was a trend in patients with more severe disease suggesting that these markers may have the potential to assist in stratifying patient risk. The present FC assay has the potential to become routine in the clinical microbiology laboratory community and to be helpful in guiding clinical decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2024 ASCO Genitourinary Cancer Symposium, this year celebrating the 20th anniversary, delved into key advancements in urothelial carcinoma (UC) and prostate cancer (PC). For UC, insights emerged from adjuvant pembrolizumab for muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma, and from the efficacy of the EV-302 study of enfortumab vedotin +pembrolizumab in the metastatic setting. In PC, adjuvant therapy with high-dose radiotherapy schedules plus long-t erm ADT was explored. In metastatic castration-resistant PC, highlights included a novel combo (cabozantinib+atezolizumab) for poor prognosis patients; confirmed benefits of ARSI+PARPi in BRCA-mutated patients; and safety considerations for ARSI treatments. The symposium continued its role as an indispensable platform for shaping specialized oncological care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]