European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
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Eur. J. Clin. Microbiol. Infect. Dis. · Nov 2011
Comparative StudyComparison of culture media for detection of Acinetobacter baumannii in surveillance cultures of critically-ill patients.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of CHROMagar Acinetobacter when compared to sheep blood agar, MacConkey agar and MacConkey agar with 6 μg/ml of imipenem for the detection of A. baumannii in surveillance cultures of hospitalized patients. We utilized peri-anal swabs and sputum samples from patients admitted to the University of Maryland Medical Center ICUs from December 7 through December 21, 2009. Samples were plated onto four media in the following order: (1) 5% sheep blood agar (SBA), (2) MacConkey agar, (3) MacConkey agar with 6 μg/ml of imipenem, and (4) CHROMagar Acinetobacter (CHROMagar). ⋯ MacConkey agar detected 16 of 18 (89%) Acinetobacter and 10 of 11 (91%) MDR- A. baumannii while MacConkey agar with 6 μg/ml imipenem detected 9 of 11 (82%) MDR-A. baumannii. CHROMagar did not differentiate MDR- A. baumannii from non-MDR-A. baumannii. CHROMagar may be useful for rapid detection of patients with MDR-A. baumannii if improved upon to better select for MDR-A. baumannii.
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Eur. J. Clin. Microbiol. Infect. Dis. · Nov 2011
Elevated soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) predicts mortality in Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia.
The soluble form of urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) is a new inflammatory marker. High suPAR levels have been shown to associate with mortality in cancer and in chronic infections like HIV and tuberculosis, but reports on the role of suPAR in acute bacteremic infections are scarce. To elucidate the role of suPAR in a common bacteremic infection, the serum suPAR levels in 59 patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) were measured using the suPARnostic ELISA assay and associations to 1-month mortality and with deep infection focus were analyzed. ⋯ The presence of deep infection focus was not associated with elevated suPAR levels as compared to patients with no deep infection focus. suPAR was found to be prognostic for mortality in receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, which was not observed for serum C-reactive protein (CRP); the area under the curve (AUC) for suPAR was 0.754 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.615-0.894, p = 0.003) and for CRP, it was 0.596 (95% CI, 0.442-0.750, p = 0.253). The optimal suPAR cut-off value in predicting 1-month mortality was 9.25 ng/mL. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the new promising biomarker, serum suPAR concentration, was able to predict mortality in SAB.