Comparative Analysis of Commercially Available Typhoid Point-of-Care Tests: Results of a Prospective and Hybrid Retrospective Multicenter Diagnostic Accuracy Study in Kenya and Pakistan.

Blood and bone marrow cultures are considered the gold standard for the diagnosis of typhoid, but these methods require infrastructure and skilled staff that are not always available in low- and middle-income countries where typhoid is endemic. The objective of the study is to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of nine commercially available Salmonella Typhi rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) using blood culture as a reference standard in a multicenter study. This was a prospective and retrospective multicenter diagnostic accuracy study conducted in two geographically distant areas where typhoid is endemic (Pakistan and Kenya; NCT04801602).

Antimicrobial Resistance in Pneumococcal Carriage Isolates from Children under 2 Years of Age in Rural Pakistan.

Antimicrobial resistance is an emerging public health concern. Ten-valent pneumococcal vaccine (PCV10) was introduced in Pakistan's Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in 2012 as a 3 + 0 schedule without catchup. From 2014 to 2018, children <2 years were randomly selected in two rural union councils of Matiari, Pakistan.

Bedaquiline Drug Resistance Emergence Assessment in Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB): a 5-Year Prospective Surveillance Study of Bedaquiline and Other Second-Line Drug Susceptibility Testing in MDR-TB Isolates.

Bedaquiline Drug Resistance Emergence Assessment in Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) (DREAM) was a 5-year (2015 to 2019) phenotypic drug resistance surveillance study across 11 countries. DREAM assessed the susceptibility of 5,036 MDR-TB isolates of bedaquiline treatment-naive patients to bedaquiline and other antituberculosis drugs by the 7H9 broth microdilution (BMD) and 7H10/7H11 agar dilution (AD) MIC methods. Bedaquiline AD MIC quality control (QC) range for the H37Rv reference strain was unchanged, but the BMD MIC QC range (0.