Publications

Background: Clinical suspects of pulmonary tuberculosis in which the sputum smears are negative for acid fast bacilli represent a diagnostic challenge in resource constrained settings. Our objective was to validate an existing clinical-radiographic score that assessed the probability of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (SNPT) in high incidence settings in Peru. Methodology/Principal Findings: We included in two referral hospitals in Lima ...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the increased diagnostic yield for pulmonary tuberculosis using bronchial washing cultures compared with sputum cultures.METHODS: Study conducted with 61 adults in Lima, Peru, from January 2006 to December 2007. The yield of sputum cultures was compared with the yield of acid-fast bacilli smears and cultures of bronchial washing for diagnosing pulmonary tuberculosis in suspected cases of clinical tuberculosis with negative ...

Purpose Clinicians often think treatment thresholds should be adapted to the setting. We intended to explore the effect in terms of harm because of false negatives and true and false positives of the application of a treatment threshold for pulmonary tuberculosis from a patient's perspective at different prevalence levels in a developing country. Methods In a cohort of 300 patients with chronic cough, we estimated the prevalence of pulmonary ...

© 2015 Asian Pacific Tropical Medicine Press. Objective: To explore the serodiagnostic potential of the five recombinant Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens CFP-10 (Rv3874), ESAT-6 (Rv3875), APA (Rv1860), PstS-1 (Rv0934), Ag85A (Rv3804c) and their combination in a Cuban population with active pulmonary tuberculosis. Methods: The serodiagnostic potential of the recombinant antigens rESAT-6, rCFP-10, rAPA, rPstS-1 produced in Escherichia coli, ...

Objective : To evaluate the performance of an algorithm based on WHO recommendations for diagnosis of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis in HIV-negative patients. Methods : We recruited HIV-negative patients with clinical suspicion of tuberculosis who had had three negative sputum smears in Lima, Peru. All included subjects underwent a complete anamnesis, physical examination and chest X-ray, and had a sputum specimen cultured in Ogawa, ...

OBJECTIVES: Currently, there are no European data about the frequency and clinical significance of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) grown from respiratory samples during the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). We determined the frequency and clinical significance of NTM isolated before or during pulmonary tuberculosis treatment in Belgian laboratories. METHODS: We conducted a nationwide retrospective multicenter cohort study on the co-isolation of ...

We evaluated the diagnostic yield of fiberoptic bronchoscopy for the diagnosis of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis in patients treated at a referral hospital in Lima, Peru. Of the 611 patients who underwent the procedure, 140 (23%) were diagnosed with tuberculosis based on the analysis of BAL samples. Being young and being male were significantly associated with positive cultures. In addition, 287 patients underwent post-bronchoscopic ...

Background. In the framework of hospital infection control, various clinical prediction rules (CPRs) for respiratory isolation of patients with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) have been developed. Our aim was to evaluate their performance in an emergency department setting with a high prevalence of PTB. Methods. We searched the MEDLINE and OVID databases to identify CPRs to predict PTB. We used a previously collected database containing ...

Little is known about the respiratory health damage related to household air pollution (HAP) in survivors of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). In a population-based cross-sectional study, we determined the prevalence and associated predictors of chronic cough and hemoptysis in 441 randomly selected PTB survivors living in 13 remote health zones with high TB burden in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Trained ...