In Brazil, diagnosis of hepatitis C is more commonly established in older patients (age 45-60 years) with more advanced disease. Reassessment of strategies for hepatitis C diagnosis in the country is required.
Background
Carbapenem‐resistant Enterobacterales (CRE) colonisation at liver transplantation (LT) increases the risk of CRE infection after LT, which impacts on recipients’ survival. Colonization status usually becomes evident only near LT. Thus, predictive models can be useful to guide antibiotic prophylaxis in endemic centres.
Aims
This study aimed to identify risk factors for CRE colonisation at LT in order to build a predictive model.
Methods
Retrospective multicentre study including consecutive adult patients who underwent LT, from 2010 to 2019, at two large teaching hospitals. We excluded patients who had CRE infections within 90 days before LT. CRE screening was performed in all patients on the day of LT. Exposure variables were considered within 90 days before LT and included cirrhosis complications, underlying disease, time on the waiting list, MELD and CLIF‐SOFA scores, antibiotic use, intensive care unit and hospital stay, and infections. A machine learning model was trained to detect the probability of a patient being colonized with CRE at LT.
Results
A total of 1544 patients were analyzed, 116 (7.5%) patients were colonized by CRE at LT. The median time from CRE isolation to LT was 5 days. Use of antibiotics, hepato‐renal syndrome, worst CLIF sofa score, and use of beta‐lactam/beta‐lactamase inhibitor increased the probability of a patient having pre‐LT CRE. The proposed algorithm had a sensitivity of 66% and a specificity of 83% with a negative predictive value of 97%.
Conclusions
We created a model able to predict CRE colonization at LT based on easy‐to‐obtain features that could guide antibiotic prophylaxis
Despite solid scientific evidence, the concepts of treatment as prevention (TASP) and Undetectable = Untransmittable (U = U) remain unfamiliar and underutilized for some healthcare providers. We conducted a self-completion survey to evaluate the knowledge of TASP/U = U in different medical specialties. Wilcoxon Rank-Sum, Chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests were used for group comparisons and a logistic regression model was used to assess factors independently associated with U = U-non-supportive attitudes. 197 physicians were included; 74% agreed/strongly agreed that people living with HIV (PLHIV) under regular treatment with undetectable viral do not transmit HIV sexually. However, only 66% agree/strongly agree that PLHIV should be informed about that. The knowledge about these concepts was poorer among gynecologists, urologists and internal medicine specialists when compared to infectious diseases specialists after adjustment for age, race/skin color, gender, and sexual orientation. Our study found that knowledge of crucial concepts of HIV prevention may be lacking for some medical specialties. This highlights the need of improvement in medical education.
Objective
Our objective was to describe and compare the occurrence of neurological outcomes and neurosyphilis in people living with HIV with incident syphilis and no neurological symptoms who underwent early screening for asymptomatic neurosyphilis (ANS) or regular clinical management without a lumbar puncture.
Methods
This was a retrospective cohort study in a single referral centre of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Patients with incident syphilis diagnosed between January 2000 and August 2016 and meeting the adapted criteria for ANS investigation suggested by Marra et al. (CD4+ T‐cell counts ≤350 cells/mm³ and/or venereal disease research laboratory test results ≥1:16) were identified. Those with no neurological symptoms and immediately referred for lumbar puncture were categorized as group 1, and those not referred for cerebrospinal fluid collection were categorized as group 2. We compared the occurrence of neurological symptoms and neurosyphilis diagnoses between the groups using incidence rates and Kaplan–Meier curves.
Results
We included 425 participants with a median follow‐up of 6 years. The incidence rate of neurological symptoms was 36.5/1000 person‐years in group 1 and 40.6/1000 person‐years in group 2 (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 0.90; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.57–1.39; p = 0.62). The incidence rate of neurosyphilis was 15.0 cases/1000 person‐years in group 1 and 6.7 cases/1000 person‐years in group 2 (IRR 2.26; 95% CI 0.93–5.68; p = 0.05).
Conclusions
We found no statistically significant differences between groups in the incidence rates of neurological symptoms and neurosyphilis. Our findings support the current guidelines, which suggest a less invasive approach regarding ANS investigation among people living with HIV with incident syphilis.
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