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Background Tuberculosis is a major global public health concern. Patients with tuberculosis who require critical care have a high mortality and delay in initiating antituberculous therapy is associated with increased mortality. Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) is a lipopolysaccharide found in the cell wall of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Urinary LAM may be used as a bedside diagnostic test for tuberculosis. Methods The study was a single centre, prospective observational study that compared the utility of urinary LAM with conventional tuberculosis diagnostic modalities in patients with suspected tuberculosis who required intensive care admission. Urinary LAM testing was performed using the Alere Determine TB LAM Ag lateral flow assay test strips. A patient was classified as having confirmed tuberculosis if they met the following criteria: a clinical presentation compatible with tuberculosis, with either a positive TB culture, a positive GeneXpert, or a histological diagnosis of tuberculosis. Results Fifty patients were included in the study, with 12 having confirmed tuberculosis. All patients received mechanical ventilation, and the ICU mortality was 60%. Urinary LAM had a sensitivity of 50.0% (95% CI, 21.1 to 78.9%) and a specificity of 84.2% (95% CI, 68.8 to 94.0%) for confirmed tuberculosis. Conclusion Urinary LAM allows for rapid bedside diagnosis of tuberculosis in critically ill patients. A positive urinary LAM should prompt consideration to initiate antituberculous treatment while the results of further diagnostic testing are awaited.

Candida auris is an invasive healthcare-associated fungal pathogen. Cases of candidemia, defined as illness in patients with Candida cultured from blood, were detected through national laboratory-based surveillance in South Africa during 2016-2017. We identified viable isolates by using mass spectrometry and sequencing. Among 6,669 cases (5,876 with species identification) from 269 hospitals, 794 (14%) were caused by C. auris. The incidence risk for all candidemia at 133 hospitals was 83.8 (95% CI 81.2-86.4) cases/100,000 admissions. Prior systemic antifungal drug therapy was associated with a 40% increased adjusted odds of C. auris fungemia compared with bloodstream infection caused by other Candida species (adjusted odds ratio 1.4 [95% CI 0.8-2.3]). The crude in-hospital case-fatality ratio did not differ between Candida species and was 45% for C. auris candidemia, compared with 43% for non-C. auris candidemia. C. auris has caused a major epidemiologic shift in candidemia in South Africa.

Introduction: Antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections are widespread globally and increases in antimicrobial resistance presents a major threat to public health. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic healthcare-associated pathogen with high rates of morbidity and mortality and an extensive range of resistance mechanisms. This study describes the antibiotic susceptibility profiles of P. aeruginosa isolates from patients with bacteraemia submitted by sentinel laboratories in South Africa from 2014 to 2015. Methodology: Organism identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing were done using automated systems. Molecular methods were used to detect common resistance genes and mechanisms. Results: Overall the susceptibility was high for all antibiotics tested with a decrease over the two-year period. There was no change in the MIC50 and MIC90 breakpoints for all antibiotics from 2014 to 2015. The MIC50 was within the susceptible breakpoint range for most antibiotics and the MIC90 was within the susceptible breakpoint range for colistin only. Phenotypically carbapenem non-susceptible isolates harboured the following plasmid-mediated genes: blaVIM (n = 81, 12%) and blaGES (n = 6, 0.9%); blaNDM (n = 4, 0.6%) and blaOXA-48 and variants (n = 3, 0.45%). Porin deletions were observed in one meropenem non-susceptible isolate only, and multi-drug resistance efflux pumps were expressed in the majority of the non-susceptible isolates investigated. BlaVEB-1, blaIMP and blaKPC were not detected. Conclusion: The prevalence of resistance to commonly used antibacterial agents was low for P. aeruginosa isolates and similarly, tested resistance mechanisms were detected in a relatively small proportion of isolates. Findings in this study represent baseline information for understanding antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in P. aeruginosa isolates from blood. Our surveillance report may assist in contributing to hospital treatment guidelines.