Title Participants "Mycobacterial diseases (except leprosy and tuberculosis)" "Françoise Portaels, STEFAAN PATTYN" "Development of simple and inexpensive tools for the control of mycobacterial diseases in a low-resource country" "Dissou Affolabi" "AIDS and mycobacterial diseases in developing and developed countries" "Françoise Portaels, ZM Kunze, JJ McFadden, PIERRE-ALAIN FONTEYNE, G Carpels" "Epidemiology of mycobacterial diseases" "Françoise Portaels" "The importance and evaluation of mycobacterial diseases as assessed by a mycobacteriological laboratory" "Françoise Portaels" "Mycobacterial diseases in AIDS patients from developing and developed countries" "Françoise Portaels, Z Kunze, JJ McFadden, PIERRE-ALAIN FONTEYNE, G Carpels" "Rapid, early and specific diagnosis of tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases in Burundi" "T Barihuta, Leen Rigouts, M Barette, JP Collart, J De Bruyn, P Kadende, G Kamamfu, JT Douglas, Françoise Portaels" "The potential usefulness of ELISA based serological tests to assist in rapid, early and specific diagnosis of tuberculosis was investigated. The materials were selected, based on published data and on our preliminary findings. Initially screening tests were performed using crude antigens such as Purified Protein Derivate (PPD) and a BCG-filtrate. Unfortunately, the results with these antigens were not promising. The specificity of both antigens using sera from 94 healthy controls was 64%. As a consequence of these findings, the crude antigens were excluded from further tests, and the study was continued with purified antigens. The work focused on 2 purified proteins: Antigen 60 (A60), a lipopolysaccharide-protein complex, and P32, a stress protein produced in zinc deprived cultures, identified as Antigen 85 A in the BCG reference system, both isolated from Mycobacterium bovis BCG. The commercial A60 based ELISA and our own P32 based ELISA were used to test a total of 300 sera from HIV positive, negative and unscreened individuals, mainly originating from Burundi. These sera were collected from clinical established cases of pulmonary TB, extrapulmonary TB, and patients with non-tuberculous tropical diseases such as salmonellosis, trypanosomiasis, malaria, etc. and healthy individuals. The A60 based ELISA had a sensitivity of 76.8% for the proven cases of active pulmonary tuberculosis and 61.9% for the extrapulmonary tuberculosis cases. No difference was shown between HIV positive and HIV negative patients. Specificity reached 95.2% for healthy individuals, but dropped to 68.1% when persons with active non-tuberculous tropical diseases were included. Eighty-six percent of the pulmonary cases and 87.7% of the extrapulmonary cases were detected by the ELISA-P32. These findings suggest that this test might be useful as a confirmatory test for the diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Again no difference was noticed between HIV negative and positive patients. The main contraindication for the use of the ELISA-P32 for the diagnosis of tuberculosis is its low specificity: 70.2% with sera from healthy controls and 22.2% for hospitalised patients and persons with non-tuberculous tropical diseases. In a small recent prospective study 4 out of 10 HIV+ persons with no evidence for TB yielded a positive result for the ELISA-P32. Two of them developed pulmonary tuberculosis within 6 months, whereas 2 P32-positives and 6 P32-negatives remained up to now without any manifestations of tuberculosis. The difference was not significant, but the number of cases was limited.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)" "Alternaria alternata and Aspergillus fumigatus mold species counteract experimental mycobacterial and allergic lung diseases through divergent innate immune mechanisms" "Pauline Lehebel" "A 475 years-old founder effect involving IL12RB1: a highly prevalent mutation conferring Mendelian susceptibility to mycobacterial diseases in European descendants" "J Yancoski, C Rocco, A Bernasconi, M Oleastro, L Bezrodnik, C Vrátnica, Filomeen Haerynck, SD Rosenzweig" "Polymerase chain reaction amplifying mycobacterial DNA from aspirates obtained by endoscopic ultrasound allows accurate diagnosis of mycobacterial disease in HIV-positive patients with abdominal lymphadenopathy" "Johannie Du Plessis, Schalk Van der Merwe" "Abdominal lymphadenopathy in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains a diagnostic challenge. We performed a prospective cohort study by recruiting 31 symptomatic HIV + patients with abdominal lymphadenopathy and assessing the diagnostic yield of endoscopic ultrasound fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA). Mean age was 38 years; 52% were female; and mean CD4 count and viral load were 124 cells/μL and 4 log, respectively. EUS confirmed additional mediastinal nodes in 26%. The porta hepatis was the most common abdominal site. Aspirates obtained by EUS-FNA were subjected to cytology, culture and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis. Mycobacterial infections were confirmed in 67.7%, and 31% had reactive lymphadenopathy. Cytology and culture had low sensitivity, whereas PCR identified 90% of mycobacterial infections. By combining the appearance of aspirates obtained by EUS-FNA and cytologic specimens, we developed a diagnostic algorithm to indicate when analysis with PCR would be useful. PCR performed on material obtained by EUS-FNA was highly accurate in confirming mycobacterial disease and determining genotypic drug resistance."