A healthy 42 year old woman presented with a tender red-bluish fluctuating swelling of the dorsum of her left hand, which had been present for five weeks. The swelling was not warm and originated from one or two extensor tendon sheaths (fig 1). There had not been any previous trauma. Treatment with trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole by the general practitioner was not successful. Until one year earl...

A simple and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method to determine basic colorants such as pararosaniline (PA), auramine O (AO), and rhodamine B (RB) in various processed foods was developed. Linearity of the calibration curves ranged from 0.05 to 50 μg/mL for PA and 0.05-100 μg/mL for AO and RB. The detection and quantification limits (LOD and LOQ) of the basic colorants, whi...

Cryptosporidium species are one of the most common causes of gastrointestinal infection in humans around the world. This study has aimed to investigate the hyper variable region of the 18S rRNA gene in Cryptosporidium for exact parasite identification. DNA was extracted from 26 fecal samples from which initially Cryptosporidium oocysts were identified by Ziehl-Neelsen acid-fast , Auramine pheno...

Three hundred twenty-four sputum specimens from 151 patients with suspected active pulmonary tuberculosis were tested for the presence of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex with auramine fluorochrome stain and automated PCR assay (Roche Cobas Amplicor Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Test [MTB]). The results were compared with those of the conventional Löwenstein-Jensen tube culture and the BACTE...

Background: Smear negative and culture positive results in pulmonary tuberculosis are not uncommon yet the underlying factors are not well established. Objective: To determine factors associated with smear negative and culture positive results. Methods: Pulmonary tuberculosis patients were consecutively recruited for 12 months from five health facilities in Mwanza region, Tanzania. Sputum exami...

Free-living protists are ubiquitous in the environment and form a potential reservoir for the persistence of animal and human pathogens. Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis is the cause of Johne's disease, a systemic infection accompanied by chronic inflammation of the intestine that affects many animals, including primates. Most humans with Crohn's disease are infected with this chroni...

The objective of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of Cryptosporidium (Apicomplexa, Cryptosporidiidae) in the snake Crotalus durissus terrificus (Serpentes, Viperidae). Fifty animals were evaluated for the presence of oocysts of Cryptosporidium sp. at the time of arrival and 30 and 60 days later. Intestinal washings with saline solution (1% body weight), fecal samples, and org...

HIV-related tuberculosis is difficult to diagnose and is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Recently, the World Health Organization has endorsed the GeneXpert MTB/RIF (Xpert) assay for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients from developing countries, but information about the use of Xpert for the diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis is scarce. In this st...

BACKGROUND Diagnosing tuberculosis in children is challenging because specimens are difficult to obtain and contain low tuberculosis concentrations, especially with HIV-coinfection. Few studies included well-controls so test specificities are poorly defined. We studied tuberculosis diagnosis in 525 children with and without HIV-infection. METHODS AND FINDINGS 'Cases' were children with suspec...

AIMS To assess the performance of three commercially available Mycobacterium tuberculosis detection systems employing nucleic acid amplification, when applied directly to respiratory and non-respiratory specimens from patients where the diagnosis of tuberculosis is difficult using clinical and traditional bacteriological methods. METHODS 42 respiratory and 21 non-respiratory specimens were co...