BACKGROUND The 2007 World Health Organization (WHO) guideline to diagnose smear-negative tuberculosis (TB) in HIV-prevalent settings was mainly based on expert advice and therefore requires evaluation in real life situations. METHODS In 2009, this guideline was introduced at the ALERT hospital in Ethiopia. From October 2009 to January 2011, the accuracy of the guideline was evaluated using My...

BACKGROUND The use of early morning sputum samples (EMS) to diagnose tuberculosis (TB) can result in treatment delay given the need for the patient to return to the clinic with the EMS, increasing the chance of patients being lost during their diagnostic workup. However, there is little evidence to support the superiority of EMS over spot sputum samples. In this new analysis of the REMoxTB stud...

Direct smear microscopy of sputum forms the mainstay of TB diagnosis in resource-limited settings. Stained sputum smear slides can serve as a ready-made resource to transport sputum for molecular drug susceptibility testing. However, bio-safety is a major concern during transport of sputum/stained slides and for laboratory workers engaged in processing Mycobacterium tuberculosis infected sputum...

BACKGROUND An accurate biomarker is urgently needed to monitor the response to treatment in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. The Xpert MTB/RIF assay is a commercially available real-time PCR that can be used to detect Mycobacterium-tuberculosis-specific DNA sequences in sputum samples. We therefore evaluated this assay with serial sputum samples obtained over 26 weeks from patients undergo...

Erythroleukemia is an uncommon disorder in children. Four cases of pediatric erythroleukemia, diagnosed over a period of nine years are presented. The patients presented with pallor, fever and hepatosplenomegaly of recent onset. Peripheral smear examination showed anemia, thrombocytopenia and circulating blasts. The bone marrow displayed erythroid hyperplasia with dysplasia and PAS positive ery...

We evaluated the reliability of Staphaurex (Wellcome Diagnostics, Dartford, England) for the direct identification of staphylococci from blood culture broth with evidence of positivity and a suggestive Gram-stained smear. Our evaluation indicates that this application is of limited sensitivity, thus reducing the value of a negative test. However, since the test is highly specific, a positive te...

BACKGROUND Smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) accounts for a considerable proportion of TB transmission, which especially endangers health care workers (HCW). Novel Mycobacterium-tuberculosis-specific interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) may offer the chance to define the burden of TB in HCW more accurately than the Mantoux tuberculin skin test (TST), but the data that is available r...

BACKGROUND Flexible bronchoscopy with bronchial washing is a useful procedure for diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), when a patient cannot produce sputum spontaneously or when sputum smears are negative. However, the benefit of gaining serial bronchial washing specimens for diagnosis of TB has not yet been studied. Therefore, we conducted a retrospective study to determine the diagnostic...

11 Confirmative diagnosis of Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) is still being a challenge at the primary 12 health care facilities in most of the rural endemic areas in the Indian sub-continent. Conventional 13 methods for parasitological confirmation are risky and require skilled personnel hence, 14 unreachable to the poor people in the endemic region. Buffy coat smear microscopy, as a 15 minimally ...

OBJECTIVES Visual inspection of the cervix after acetic acid application (VIA) is widely recommended as the method of choice in cervical cancer screening programs in resource-limited settings because of its simplicity and ability to link with immediate treatment. In testing the effectiveness of VIA, human papillomavirus DNA testing, and Pap cytology in a population-based study in a peri-urban a...