Aims:Urine dipstick analysis is a quick, cheap and a useful test in predicting Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) in hospitalized patients. Our aim is to evaluate the reliability (sensitivity) of urine dipstick analysis against urine culture in the diagnosis of UTI.Materials and Methods:Patients admitted to our hospital suspected of having UTI, with positive urine cultures were included in this study from a 2-year period (January 2011 to December 2012). Dipstick urinalysis was done using multistix 10 SG (Siemens) and clinitek advantus analyzer. The sensitivity of dipstick nitrites, leukocyte esterase and blood in these culture-positive UTI patients was calculated retrospectively.Results:Urine dipstick analysis of 635 urine culture-positive patients was studied. The sensitivity of nitrite alone and leukocyte esterase alone were 23.31% and 48.5%, respectively. The sensitivity of blood alone in positive urine culture was 63.94%, which was the highest sensitivity for a single screening test. The presence of leukocyte esterase and/or blood increased the sensitivity to 72.28%. The sensitivity was found to be the highest when nitrite, leukocyte and blood were considered together.Conclusions:Nitrite test and leukocyte esterase test when used individually is not reliable to rule out UTI. Hence, symptomatic UTI patients with negative dipstick assay should be subjected to urine culture for a proper management.

The predominant genotype in our population was cagA positive vacA s1, which was found to be significantly associated with patients with gastric diseases, especially PUD. VacA s1 can serve as a single best virulence marker of the disease manifestation.

Background: To analyse the risk-factors contributing to infection with multidrug-resistant organisms.Methods: 150 diabetic patients with foot ulcer were prospectively studied. Detailed clinical history and clinical examination of the ulcer were done for all patients. The microbiological profile was analyzed for each patient. Using internationally accepted criteria, the multidrug-resistant organisms were identified. Risk factors for acquiring MDRO infection were identified using appropriate statistical tools.Results: MDRO were isolated from 99 patients of 150 (66%). 54.8% (153 out of 279) of isolated organisms were multidrug-resistant organisms. By univariate analysis poor glycaemic control, previous hospitalisation, previous history of amputation, previous antibiotic usage, size of the ulcer, necrotic ulcer, recurrent ulcers, higher grade of ulcer, the presence of osteomyelitis, the presence of retinopathy, peripheral vascular disease, neuropathy and polymicrobial culture, were significantly associated with MDRO infected foot ulcers. Analysis by logistic regression indicated that only two factors significantly increased the risk of acquiring MDRO infection. They are recurrent ulcer (OR = 3.39, p <0.05, 95% CI = 1.081-10.664) and higher grade of ulcer (OR = 13.44, p <0.001, 95 % CI =3.595-50.278).Conclusions: The prevalence of MDRO is alarmingly high in infected diabetic foot ulcers. Recurrent ulcers and higher grade of ulcers are more prone to acquire MDROs.

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Pneumonia with bacteremia accounts for the majority (70%) of cases of invasive pneumococcal diseases. Laboratory characterization of pneumococci is routinely done by sensitivity to optochin. We identified an atypical presentation of optochin-resistant pneumococci in blood isolate of a patient with sepsis. Polymerase chain reaction for autolysin (lytA) and pneumolysin (ply) was positive in the bile soluble isolate. Gene sequencing revealed synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism type of functional mutation in lytA gene. There have been emerging reports of optochin-resistant pneumococci. Diminishing relevance and reliability of optochin sensitivity testing in identifying pneumococci in clinical samples has been highlighted by this case report.