Rapid and reliable identification of pathogens is very important in the management of septic patients. We retrospectively evaluated the diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility of a multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay (SeptiFast (SF)) in patients with suspected sepsis in a tertiary care hospital in Tallinn, Estonia. A total of 160 blood samples from 144 patients were included in the study. SF results were compared with corresponding blood culture (BC) results. The concordance between SF and BC was 78.8%. The rate of positive results was significantly higher in SF than in BC (33.7% vs. 21.2%, respectively; p < 0.001). A total of 27 samples were found positive by both SF and BC, 27 by SF only, and seven by BC only. Of a total of 83 microorganisms detected SF identified 71, and BC 42 (p < 0.001). SF detected markedly more patients with candidemia: 11 patients were detected by SF compared to four patients by BC. Antimicrobial treatment was changed in 21 (38.9%) of 54 SF positive cases. In conclusion, our results demonstrated the high diagnostic accuracy of SF in detection of sepsis pathogens. In conjunction with its impact on therapeutic decisions, SF proved to be a useful adjunct to conventional blood culture in the diagnosis of sepsis etiology.

M ycobacterium tuberculosis isolates of the Beijing 94-32 cluster (also named the Central Asian/Russian Beijing strain) constitute an important component of the population structure of the pathogen in the countries of the Former Soviet Union (1-4). A variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR)-based analysis suggested that this genotype could speculatively trace its origins to the northwestern regions of China (5). Beijing 94-32 is the largest type within the VNTR-defined CC1 group (6) and falls within the East Europe 1 group as defined by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) (7). Our analysis of all CC1 isolates compiled in the work of Merker et al. (6) demonstrated that type 94-32 presents the largest node in the central position in the phylogenetic network (see Fig. S1 in the supplemental material), and we therefore suggest naming this clonal complex the Beijing 94-32 cluster. The 94-32 cluster isolates were associated with multidrug-resistant/extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis in Russia (8) and in Uzbekistan (termed the Central Asia outbreak strain [2]), and in immigrants in Western Europe (9, 10). This justifies the interest in having a simple tool to rapidly detect this clinically and epidemiologically relevant strain. In this study, DNA of 19 Russian M. tuberculosis isolates of the Beijing genotype was subjected to WGS on the MiSeq platform (Illumina). The next-generation sequencing (NGS) data were deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (project number PRJNA305488). The fastq and vcf files were subjected to comprehensive bioinformatics

BACKGROUND: Microalbuminuria (MA) is recognized as an important risk factor for cardiovascular and renal complications in diabetes. We sought to evaluate how screening for MA is conducted and how urine albumin (UA) results are interpreted in primary care internationally.

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Background: There is increasing interest in direct patient engagement including receiving their laboratory medicine results. We previously established an appetite for Specialists in Laboratory Medicine to support patients in understanding results. The aim of this study was to establish whether patients agreed with such an approach, determined through surveying views in eight European countries. Methods: A standardized five-question survey was administered across eight European countries to a total of 1084 individuals attending medical outpatient clinics, with 100 patients each in Poland, Serbia, Netherlands, Turkey and Czech Republic, 101 in Estonia, 116 in Denmark and 367 in Norway. The responses across countries were compared using the chi-square test (p < 0.05).