Priyadarshini Kumaraswamy Rajeswaran , Preethi Muthusamy Sundar, Prasanna Nedungadi Kumar, Karthikeyan Shanmugam,
Volume 19, Issue 3 (May-Jun 2025)
Abstract
Background: Several hematological indicators have been linked to the intensity and course of Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19), including platelets, total white blood cell (WBC) count, lymphocytes, neutrophils (as well as the neutrophil-lymphocyte and platelet-lymphocyte ratios), and hemoglobin. The purpose of this study was to assess the utility of cell population data (CPD) of lymphocyte and monocyte parameters in the early diagnosis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.
Methods: The baseline complete blood count examination was performed for 222 patients with positive results for COVID-19 (case group) and 161 patients with negative results for COVID-19 (control group). Lymphocyte and monocyte CPD were calculated in both groups. The independent t-test was used to compare the mean values between the two groups. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to evaluate the discriminating capacity of the individual parameters.
Results: The analysis revealed that Standard Deviations of Monocyte Volume (SDMV) and Standard Deviations of Lymphocyte Conductivity (SDLC) showed the highest significance in predicting SARS-CoV-2 infection. Moreover, SDMV had a sensitivity of 93.7% and SDLC had a sensitivity of 80.6% at cut-off values of 22.25 and 10.9, respectively. In the case group, 49 of the 222 patients treated in the intensive care units (ICUs) showed a higher SDMV compared with the remaining 173 patients who were asymptomatic, or mildly symptomatic (P-value <0.03).
Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that SDMV and SDLC can serve as reliable and cost-effective markers for early prediction of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Furthermore, SDMV shows potential as a prognostic biomarker. These findings highlight the potential utility of CPD parameters in COVID-19 diagnosis and prognosis.
Dr Apurba Sastry, Ms Shuruthi Kirubakaran, Dr Sarumathi Dhandapani, Dr Ketan Priyadarshi,
Volume 19, Issue 5 (9-2025)
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Background: The emergence of multi-drug resistant organisms has limited the choice of therapeutic options to treat infections. The lack of development of new antimicrobials paved the way for considering the reassessment of older antibiotics like fosfomycin. In this context, we assessed the in-vitro effect of fosfomycin against carbapenem- resistant Enterobacterales and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus on bloodstream isolates by agar dilution, disk diffusion and screen agar.
Material & Methods: All the 141 consecutive blood isolates which were resistant to carbapenem and 62 MRSA blood culture isolates were collected over a period of 8 months. The methods such as fosfomycin agar dilution (0.25 µg/ml to 512 µg/ml) , Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion (150μg of fosfomycin + 50μg of glucose -6-phosphate) and fosfomycin screen agar (32 µg/ml, 48µg/ml & 64µg/ml) were performed. All the three methods are interpreted using EUCAST guidelines. The agreement between the new method and the reference method was calculated.
Results: Among the tested isolates, 100 % of MRSA followed by E. coli (86.4%), K.pneumoniae (65.2%) and E.cloacae (50%) were susceptible to fosfomycin. The MIC50 and MIC90 of fosfomycin was 0.5µg/ml and 2µg/ml for MRSA, 16µg/ml and 32µg/ml for K.pneumoniae, 4µg/ml and 16µg/ml for E.coli, 8µg/ml and 32µg/ml for E.cloacae respectively.
Conclusion: In this study, we observed that fosfomycin has a good in-vitro effect on most of the carbapenem resistant Enterobacterales and MRSA isolates tested.
Key words: Fosfomycin; susceptibility testing; antibiotic resistance; MRSA; carbapenem resistant Enterobacterales; MIC
Short running title: In vitro fosfomycin susceptibility
