No abstract

1924on July 5, 2020 by guest http://aac.asm.org/ Downloaded from a 50% and 90%, MICs at which 50 and 90% of isolates are inhibited. The breakpoints were considered to be Յ8 mg/liter for amoxicillin and ampicillin and Յ16 mg/liter for piperacillin.

VFRs account for a significant number of childhood malarial cases. These patients had not taken malaria chemoprophylaxis and malarial cases were more severe. VFR children are a high-risk group, and pretravel advice should underline the risk for malaria. Recent immigrants can be asymptomatic and parasitemias are lower. Therefore, a high index of suspicion is necessary, and PCR for Plasmodium should be performed in case of negative thick smears.

In an effort to improve the diagnosis of intestinal amoebiasis, a real-time PCR has been used for the detection and differentiation of Entamoeba histolytica and E. dispar infections in African or South American immigrants who live in Spain. Faecal samples from all of the 130 subjects had apparently been found to contain E. histolytica/E. dispar cysts by microscopical examination. Using the real-time PCR, E. histolytica DNA was detected in faecal samples from only 10 (7.7%) of the immigrants, with E. dispar DNA detected in the samples from another 117 (90.0%) of the subjects. The use of such PCR in the routine investigation of patients found positive for E. histolytica/E. dispar cysts (by microscopy) is recommended, especially in non-endemic areas.

The resistance of Campylobacter jejuni strains to the fluoroquinolones is increasingly frequent, and in our area it reaches nearly 50%. We studied the susceptibilities of 60 of these strains to 11 oral antibiotics. All strains except one were susceptible to the macrolides tested, with azithromycin being the most active agent tested. Of the rest of the antibiotics studied, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, clindamycin, and fosfomycin displayed good in vitro activities. Knowledge of the susceptibilities of these microorganisms to a varied group of oral agents is necessary in view of the appearance of multiresistant strains, such as those included in our series.