Cryptosporidium parasites are leading causes of enteric disease, especially in children. A prospective survey on the prevalence of cryptosporidiosis in children less than five years of age was undertaken at six microbiology laboratories in Kenya on fecal samples submitted for routine parasite and ova investigations. Analysis of 4,899 samples over a two-year study period showed an overall prevalence of cryptosporidiosis of 4% that was highest between November to February. Investigations on the nature of enteric diseases prompting ova and cyst examination requests showed 66.4% had acute diarrhea, 9% had persistent diarrhea, and 21% had recurrent diarrhea. The main symptoms were abdominal pain (51.1%), vomiting (51.6%), and abdominal swelling (11%). The prevalence of cryptosporidiosis was highest among children 13-24 months of age (5.2%) and least among those 48-60 months of age (2%). No significant differences were observed by sex but vomiting was slightly higher in males than in females (65% males and 52% females; P = 0.07). Cryptosporidiosis was significantly associated with persistent diarrhea (P = 0.0001, odds ratio [OR] = 2.193, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.463-3.29), vomiting (P = 0.0273, OR = 1.401, 95% CI = 1.04-1.893), and abdominal swelling (P = 0.0311, OR = 1.56, 95% CI = 1.04-2.34). Genotype analysis based on polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism of the 18S rRNA gene fragment showed that 87% (153 of 175) of the Cryptosporidium isolates were C. hominis, 9% (15 of 175) were C. parvum, and remaining 4% were C. canis, C. felis, C. meleagridis, and C. muris. The most common protozoa in coinfected patients were Entamoeba histolytica/E. dispar, E. coli, and Giardia intestinalis (6%, 5%, and 2%, respectively). Our results show that Cryptosporidium is among the most common protozoan parasites in children with enteric diseases and that anthroponotic species are the leading cause of human cryptosporidiosis in Kenya, which suggests that human-to-human transmission is the main mode of spread.

BackgroundThe Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) guidelines are the most popular breakpoint guidelines used in antimicrobial susceptibility testing worldwide. The EUCAST guidelines are freely available to users while CLSI is available for non-members as a package of three documents for US $500 annually. This is prohibitive for clinical microbiology laboratories in resource poor settings. We set out to compare antibiotic susceptibility determined by the two guidelines to determine whether adoption of EUCAST guidelines would significantly affect our susceptibility patterns.MethodsWe reviewed minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of various antibiotics routinely reported for Escherichia coli (E. coli), Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) isolates from an automated microbiology identification system (VITEK-2) at the Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi’s Pathology department. These MICs were then analyzed using both CLSI 2015 and EUCAST 2015 guidelines and classified as resistant, intermediate or susceptible. We compared the susceptibility and agreement between the CLSI and EUCAST categorizations.ResultsSusceptibility data from a total of 5165 E. coli, 1103 S. aureus and 532 P. aeruginosa isolates were included. The concordance rates of the two guidelines for E. coli, S. aureus and P. aeruginosa ranged from 78.2 to 100 %, 94.6 to 100 % and 89.1 to 95.5 % respectively. The kappa statistics for E. coli MICs revealed perfect agreement between CLSI and EUCAST for cefotaxime, ceftriaxone and trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole, almost perfect agreement for ampicillin, ciprofloxacin, cefuroxime, gentamicin and ceftazidime, substantial agreement for meropenem, moderate agreement for cefepime and amoxicillin-clavulanate, fair agreement for nitrofurantoin and poor agreement for amikacin. For S. aureus the kappa statistics revealed perfect agreement for penicillin, trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole, levofloxacin, oxacillin, linezolid and vancomycin, almost perfect agreement for clindamycin, erythromycin and tetracycline and moderate agreement for gentamicin. For P. aeruginosa the kappa analysis revealed moderate to almost perfect agreement for all the anti-pseudomonal antibiotics.ConclusionThe results show comparable antibiotic susceptibility patterns between CLSI and EUCAST breakpoints. Given that EUCAST guidelines are freely available, it makes it easier for laboratories in resource poor settings to have an updated and readily available reference for interpreting antibiotic susceptibilities.

Seven carbapenem-resistant NDM-1-positive Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates were recovered from patients hospitalized between 2007 and 2009 in different wards at a referral and tertiary care center in Nairobi. Most of the isolates were obtained from urine. All isolates carried the bla NDM-1 carbapenemase gene previously reported from India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. These isolates were clonally related and expressed many other resistance determinants, including ␤-lactamases CTX-M-15, OXA-1, OXA-9, CMY-6, and aminoglycoside resistance methylase RmtC. This work corresponds to the first report of NDM-1 producers in Africa.

Multidrug-resistant bacteria pose a major challenge to the clinical management of infections in resource-poor settings. Although nontyphoidal Salmonella (NTS) bacteria cause predominantly enteric self-limiting illness in developed countries, NTS is responsible for a huge burden of life-threatening bloodstream infections in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, we characterized nine S. Typhimurium isolates from an outbreak involving patients who initially failed to respond to ceftriaxone treatment at a referral hospital in Kenya. These Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium isolates were resistant to ampicillin, chloramphenicol, cefuroxime, ceftriaxone, aztreonam, cefepime, sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim, and cefpodoxime. Resistance to β-lactams, including to ceftriaxone, was associated with carriage of a combination of blaCTX-M-15, blaOXA-1, and blaTEM-1 genes. The genes encoding resistance to heavy-metal ions were borne on the novel IncHI2 plasmid pKST313, which also carried a pair of class 1 integrons. All nine isolates formed a single clade within S. Typhimurium ST313, the major clone of an ongoing invasive NTS epidemic in the region. This emerging ceftriaxone-resistant clone may pose a major challenge in the management of invasive NTS in sub-Saharan Africa.