Investigation of Positive Streptococcus pneumoniae Urinary Antigen Test Results in a Korean University Hospital
Year: 2010
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Background: The Streptococcus pneumoniae urinary antigen test (SPUAT) (Binax Now, USA) was developed for detecting polysaccharide C in urine samples for rapid diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia, the most common cause of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).To validate positive results of these tests, we retrospectively investigated all positive results obtained from the emergency room of a Korean university hospital among patients with suspected CAP.Methods: One hundred twenty-three positive SPUAT results were abstracted and analyzed from the authors' laboratory information system among the SPUAT results performed from 1,143 pneumonic patients admitted from the emergency room of a university hospital between 2007 and 2008.Medical records, including conventional microbiologic analysis results, were reviewed in detail for all positive test results.Results: Among 123 patients with the positive SPUAT results, 24 patients were excluded due to hospitalization history during the preceding month.Nine of 99 patients (9.1%) with suspected CAP had con-firmed pneumococcal pneumonia upon conventional sputum or blood culture.Thirty-five positive results (35.4%) showed other microorganisms upon conventional methods, which might be due to possible cross-reactivity.Among those, 23 positive results were considered bacterial pneumonic agents, and 12 positive results were regarded as urinary tract infection strains or contaminating agents.Fifty-five positive SPUAT results (55.6%) showed negative conventional microbiologic growth, and some positive SPUAT results might be caused by true pneumococcal infection although without cultural evidence.Conclusion: Our retrospective study demonstrated that a positive SPUAT result typically does not agree well with conventional culture methods, suggesting that the value of a positive SPUAT result in etiology determination may be limited under practical conditions in a university hospital.(
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2159294285