Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is a lung disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), known for its high morbidity and mortality rate. When it infects organs outside the lungs, condition called extrapulmonary TB.
 Case report: A 52-year-old man who came to dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo hospital with worsening abdominal pain since month ago. During physical examination, tenderness in right...

BACKGROUND To quantify the likely impact of recent WHO policy recommendations regarding smear microscopy and the introduction of appropriate low-cost fluorescence microscopy on a) case detection and b) laboratory workload. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS An audit of the laboratory register in an urban hospital, Lilongwe, Malawi, and the application of a simple modelling framework. The adoption...

Burkholderia cepacia is a gram-negative bacilli leading to pneumonia with poor prognosis and usually seen in patients with immunosuppression or with structural lung diseases. This report is about two patients with no underlying disease diagnosed as B. cepacia pneumonia mimicking malignancy and tuberculosis. Bronchoscopy was applied on both patients since no response to treatment with wide spect...

A 44-year-old human immunodeficiency virus-infected (HIV+) female with severe Category 3 (C3) diagnosed in 2010 was admitted to hospital acute diarrhoea. She non-adherent antiretroviral therapy (ART) and had a previous suspicion of respiratory symptoms cough that been persisting for 15 days. Clinical examination revealed immune deterioration (viral load: 109,655 copies/mL; CD4+ count: 14 cells/...

Background: There is growing evidence that diabetes mellitus (DM) is an important risk factor for tuberculosis (TB). A significant number of DM patients have poor glycemic control. This study was carried out to find the impact of poor glycemic control on newly diagnosed smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus in a tertiary care hospital.Methods: In a hospita...

APPLIED RESEARCH Completed studies Studies on sputum transported in cetyl pyridinium chloride for detection of M. tuberculosis Background Drug resistance surveys require transportation of sputum samples collected from pulmonary TB patients in cetyl pyridinium chloride (CPC) solution to the reference laboratory for bacteriological investigations. It was observed that smears from sputum transport...

BACKGROUND Screening household contacts of active tuberculosis (TB) patients is recommended for TB control. Due to resource constraints this rarely occurs in lower income countries. Demographic and clinical features of index cases may influence the likelihood of onwards TB transmission. It has also been proposed that accumulation of intracellular lipid bodies within M. tuberculosis cells may al...

Although Giemsa staining has been routinely used for the detection of trophozoites and intracystic bodies in smears of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) from patients with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, it does not normally stain the cyst wall. For detection of the cysts other stains such as toluidine Blue 'O' and methenamine silver must be used as well. Sulphation of smears before staining w...

The induced sputum technique allows sampling of the airways in a non-invasive manner and thus offers a unique opportunity to identify biomarkers of potential clinical utility in respiratory medicine. Sputum cells were originally examined in stained smears and the procedure was applied in both research and clinical settings from the 1950s through the 1970s. The cells, recovered from spontaneous ...

Although Giemsa staining has been routinely used for the detection of trophozoites and intracystic bodies in smears of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) from patients with Pneumocystis cariniipneumonia, it does not normally stain the cyst wall. For detection ofthe cysts other stains such as toluidine Blue 'O' and methenamine silver must be used as well. Sulphation of smears before staining wit...