A decade surveillance study of Mycobacterium xenopi disease and antimicrobial susceptibility levels in a reference teaching hospital of northern Italy: HIV-associated versus non-HIV-associated infection.

Objective And Method: The aim of our survey is to investigate the epidemiology and in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility levels of 35 consecutive Mycobacterium xenopi strains responsible for confirmed disease at a University Hospital from 1993 to 2002 and to identify eventual differences in the in vitro sensitivity profile between the 17 strains isolated from patients with HIV disease and the 18 isolates cultured from non-HIV-infected individuals.

Results: The involvement of lower airways accounted for 88.6% of cases; but atypical pulmonary findings, including cavitation and a prominent inflammatory reaction, recently emerged in HIV-infected patients successfully treated with HAART, which raises the possible role of immune reconstitution syndrome in the clinical pathomorphism of this opportunistic disease.

Role of Mycobacterium xenopi disease in patients with HIV infection at the time of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Comparison with the pre-Haart period.

Background And Setting: A reliable and timely clinical, radiological, and bacteriological diagnosis, and an optimal treatment of non-tubercular mycobacteriosis (including Mycobacterium xenopi disease), remain an unanswered challenge for clinicians facing immunocompromised patients, including those with HIV infection.

Objective: The aim of our survey is to report the frequency, and the epidemiological, immunological, microbiological, clinical, and therapeutic features of all confirmed HIV-associated M. xenopi disease observed from 1993-2002, with special attention paid to eventual differences that emerged after the introduction of potent antiretroviral therapy (highly active antiretroviral therapy, HAART), on the basis of an international literature update.

[Reduction of antibiotic resistance of Enterococcus faecalis in infections of the genitourinary tract].

Antimicrobial susceptibility levels of Enterococcus faecalis isolated from urine were followed up at our University Hospital during three years (1999-2001), in order to evaluate the trend of antibiotic resistance of this common community-acquired pathogen of the genito-urinary tract. One thousand and 249 consecutive strains were examined, and a surprisingly low resistance profile was detected. As a result, penicillin , ampicillin, nitrofurantoin and piperacillin may still represent first-line agents in our area when community-acquired urinary tract enterococcal infections is of concern, pending in vitro susceptibility studies.