BACKGROUND Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) is an important infection-related complication, whose mode of transmission remains uncertain. METHODS We investigated a nosocomial cluster of 14 PJP cases (11 confirmed and 3 probable) in kidney transplant recipients using epidemiological and genotyping methods. RESULTS Poisson regression calculated an incidence density ratio of 42.8 (95% co...

Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is more sensitive than microscopy for detecting Pneumocystis jirovecii in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. We therefore developed a qPCR assay and compared the results with those of a routine immunofluorescence assay (IFA) and clinical data. The assay included automated DNA extraction, amplification of the mitochondrial large-subunit rRNA gene and an internal control,...

INTRODUCTION Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) is an opportunistic life-threatening infection, especially for immunocompromised individuals. A trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) combination is commonly used for the treatment of PCP, targeting both dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) and dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) enzymes. Several studies have already shown that polymorphisms in the DHPS gene ar...

High prevalence of Pneumocystis jirovecii dihydropteroate synthase gene 1 mutations in patients with first episode of Pneumocystis pneumonia in Santiago, 2 Chile, and their clinical response to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole therapy. 3 4 Carolina A Ponce, Magali Chabé, Claudio George, Alejandra Cárdenas, Luisa 5 Duran, Julia Guerrero, Rebeca Bustamante, Olga Matos, Laurence Huang, Robert 6 F Mil...

TO THE EDITOR—We read with interest the article by Sassi et al published in Clinical Infectious Diseases [1]. They investigated Pneumocystis jirovecii genotypes involved in Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) outbreaks among renal transplant recipients. To that aim, they used fragment length polymorphisms of the major surface glycoprotein gene family. This work revealed that the same P. jirovecii geno...

The detection of Pneumocystis DNA in clinical specimens by using PCR assays is leading to important advances in Pneumocystis pneumonia (PcP) clinical diagnosis, therapy and epidemiology. Highly sensitive and specific PCR tools improved the clinical diagnosis of PcP allowing an accurate, early diagnosis of Pneumocystis infection, which should lead to a decreased duration from onset of symptoms t...

Since there have been no published molecular studies of Pneumocystis jirovecii isolates from Iranian patients, we investigated the genotypes of such isolates recovered from HIV-infected patients, those undergoing cancer chemotherapy and patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). P. jirovecii typing, based on ITS1 and ITS2 sequence analysis, was performed on 34 isolates from Ira...

The outbreak of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) among kidney transplant recipients is emerging worldwide. It is important to control nosocomial PJP infection. A delay in diagnosis and treatment increases the number of reservoir patients and the number of cases of respiratory failure and death. Owing to the large number of kidney transplant recipients compared to other types of organ tran...

BACKGROUND Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) is a major cause of hospitalization and mortality in HIV-infected African children. Microbiologic diagnosis relies predominantly on silver or immunofluorescent staining of a lower respiratory tract (LRT) specimens which are difficult to obtain in children. Diagnosis on upper respiratory tract (URT) specimens using PCR has been reported useful in adults, b...

BACKGROUND We report a case of progressive Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (Wegener's Granulomatosis) with life-threatening complications of both the underlying disease and induction immunosuppressive therapy. Here, for the first time, cyclophosphamide toxicity and severe opportunistic infections including pneumocystis jirovecii- pneumonia were found in one case in a close temporal relationshi...