To detect these cancers at an earlier stage and improve outcomes, there should be increased educational efforts directed toward physicians who treat these patients. A recognition that there may be additional risk factors for late-stage diagnosis, beyond the established risk factors, such as family history and excess sun exposure, should be included in the initial assessment. Specific public education efforts should also be targeted to these patients to increase their self-surveillance and surveillance of their partners.

Fifty percent of Staphylococcal spp. were ER among which 23.48% were iMLS B phenotypes. Eighty-seven per cent of iMLS B phenotypes were observed to be methicillin-resistant. The high frequency of methicillin resistance isolates (87.12%) with in vitro inducible clindamycin resistance at our institute raises concern of clindamycin treatment failures with methicillin-resistant infections. So we recommend that microbiology laboratories should include the D-test for inducible resistance to clindamycin in the routine antibiotic susceptibility testing.

Background: Omicron a new variant of SARS COV2 was first detected in November 2021. This was believed to be highly transmissible and evade immunity as a result urgent need was felt to screen all positive, identify Omicron cases and isolate them to prevent spread of infection and study their clinico-epidemiological profile. Methodology: All positive cases detected in state of Rajasthan during November to January beginning were selected for next generation sequencing. Processing was done as per protocol on Ion Torrent S5 system for 1210 samples and bioinformatics analysis was done. Results: Among the 1210 samples tested 762(62.9%) were Delta/Delta like and other lineages, 291(24%) were Omicron and 157(12.9%) were invalid or repeat samples. Within a month the proportion of Delta and other variants was reversed, from zero omicron became 81% and delta and other variants 19%, initially all omicron cases were international travellers and their contacts but soon community transmission was seen. Majority of omicron patients were asymptomatic (56.7%) or had mild disease (33%), 9.2% had moderate symptoms and 2(0.7%) had severe disease requiring hospitalization, of which one (0.3%) died and rest (99.7%) recovered. History of vaccination was seen in 81.1%, of previous infection in 43.2%. Among the Omicron cases BA.1 (62.8%) was the predominant lineage followed by BA.2(23.7%) and B.1.529 (13.4%), however rising trends were seen initially for BA.1 and later for BA.2 also. Conclusion: In very short time Omicron has spread in community and has taken over the pre-existing Delta/Delta like and other lineages, it evades immunity, but the good part is most of the cases were asymptomatic or had mild disease and mortality rate was very low. Key words; SARSCoV2, NGS, Omicron

Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) as well as Non-tubercular mycobacterium (NTM) with similar clinical presentation. Infections due to NTM are reported to have increased in the past few years. Growth of M.tb is inhibited by p-Nitrobenzoic acid (PNB), whereas, NTM are resistant. One hundred and nine isolates from various clinical samples were identified up to species level by their growth rate, pigmentation, and a battery of biochemical tests, including niacin accumulation, nitrate reduction, and heat-stable catalase (68°C) reactions. Para-nitrobenzoic acid (PNB) inhibition test was performed to differentiate between M.tb and NTM. PNB was added to the Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium and BACTEC™ MIGIT (Mycobacteria Growth Indicator Tube)960 medium to a final concentration of 500 μg/ml. All the M.tb isolates, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv (standard strain), were inhibited by PNB on both LJ and MGIT 960. Of the NTM isolates, all were resistant to PNB on MGIT 960 and on LJ PNB, except one isolate of Mycobacterium marinum that was resistant to MGIT 960 PNB, but was susceptible to LJ PNB. The reporting time for M.tb ranged from 4–11 days (median 5.9 days) by MGIT 960 and for NTM it was 2–10 days with an average of 4.5 days. This study was carried out to establish the accuracy and efficiency of MGIT 960 PNB and to differentiate between M.tb and NTM.

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