Bacterial Conjunctivitis: Microbiological Profile, Antimicrobial Susceptibility Patterns and Recommendations for Treatment

Conjunctivitis is one of the most common ocular infections, with bacterial infections accounting for 50-70% of all conjunctivitis cases. We conducted a study to determine the bacteria causing conjunctivitis and their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns at a large hospital and medical college in North India. Conjunctival swab specimens were obtained from 91 conjunctivitis patients attending the Ophthalmology out-patient department and were processed by Gram’s stain, culture and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Of the 91 samples collected, 46 showed growth of bacterial isolates; yielding total of 49 isolates. Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria comprised 77.5% and 22.4% respectively; including Staphylococcus aureus (31%), Staphylococcus epidermidis (27%), Streptococcus pneumoniae (16%), Streptococcus pyogenes (4%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (10%), Klebsiella (8%), E. coli (2%) and Proteus spp. (2%). Most bacteria were susceptible to the newer generation fluoroquinolones, particularly gatifloxacin, and hence may be used if the treatment is warranted. Amikacin can also be used if Gram negative organisms are suspected. However, the use of antibiotics must be minimized and choice should be made on the basis of microbiological report

Hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers in a tertiary care academic health care organization

Background: Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) are a major cause of high morbidity, disability, mortality and rising costs for health systems. Preventing the HAI risk by planning and implementing effective preventive strategies is important to safeguard patient health. Handwashing is one of the fundamental measures for preventing transmission of hospital-acquired infections.Methods: This cross-sectional observational study was conducted in the surgical ICU from January to February 2018 to evaluate the presence of adhesion to the different aspects of HH. Inclusion criteria included all nurses and allied healthcare workers of surgical ICU while all other HCWs were excluded. Two observers collected all HH data. During this analysis, 3000 HH opportunities were observed. HH compliance was tested for all 5 moments as per WHO guidelines. Data thus collected were entered into a computer-based spreadsheet for analysis using SPSS statistical software (version 20) (IBM Corp., NY, USA).Results: Overall hand hygiene compliance observed as per WHO Guidelines was 79.8%. Nurses had an adherence rate of 77.8%; allied staff adherence was 81.8%. Nurses’ compliance after touching patient surroundings was lowest at 60.7%. 96% staff was aware of the facts like diseases prevented by hand washing, ideal duration of HH, reduction of health care associated infections.Conclusions: Overall, the involved ICUs showed low levels of adherence to best hygiene practices with overall compliance of 79.2%. This suggests the need to implement immediate strategies for infection control in the ICUs. A multidisciplinary intervention could be effective in preventing and control the HAI risk

Proteomic Analysis of Circulating Immune Complexes from Tuberculosis Patients

Circulating immune complexes (CIC’s) are associated with disease progression in Tuberculosis (TB) though their role in pathogenesis is still unclear. Hence the present study was undertaken to identify proteins of diagnostic potential in tuberculosis by proteomic profiling of CIC’s. Serum samples from tuberculosis patients (n=28), latent TB (n=10) and healthy (n=15) individuals were collected and CIC’s levels were estimated by ELISA. CIC’s were isolated by 7% Polyethylene Glycol precipitation and were subjected to proteomic analysis. Bioinformatic analysis and functional annotation of identified proteins was performed using Mascot search engine and PANTHER respectively. Identified protein was validated by ELISA. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS version 16 and Graph pad prism 5. The mean CIC concentration in TB, latent TB and healthy individuals was found to be 38.23±11.45, 24.43±15.09, and 8.61±2.47µg/ml respectively. A total of 74, 48 and 60 proteins were identified in CIC’s from of TB, latent TB and healthy individuals respectively. Among identified proteins the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of C1qC to distinguishing TB patients from controls (with respect to both latent TB and healthy controls) was found to be 87.18% , 93.33%, 94.44%, 84.85% and 89.86% respectively. Our exploratory analysis suggests that immune-complex based assays might provide better alternate to invasive diagnostic techniques especially in diagnosis of extra pulmonary TB. However, further elaborate studies are required