Bacteria Involved in Lower Respiratory Tract Infection in Adult in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa

Abstract

Aims: Performing diagnosis in patients with lower respiratory tract infection is still challenging and is only achieved in half of the cases by conventional methods in Côte d'Ivoire.  A few works concerning the etiologies of severe pneumonia were carried out in spite of methods of diagnosis. The present study was conducted to identify and highlight the common causative bacteria of pneumonia by culture method and through the method of multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Study Design: A prospective cohort analysis was conducted for 90 adult African patients hospitalised for acute pneumonia. Place and Duration of Study: Pneumophtisiology department (PPH) of the University Hospital Center of Cocody (Côte d'Ivoire) and laboratory of Bacteriology- Virology of Pasteur Institut of Côte d’Ivoire,  between February 2016 and October 2017. Methodology: A total of 90 patients (42 men, 48 women, age range 18-77 years) with symptoms of acute lower respiratory infection and diagnosed with pneumonia were included. Only 33 patients fulfilled inclusion criteria and gave the consent to do fibroscopy. Culture and PCR methods were performed to isolate the most common bacteria in the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid. Results: Four bacterial isolates were identified in 33 cases (12.1%) in all patients using the culture method. This number increased to 21 (63.6%) with multiplex PCR. The most commonly identified bacteria by PCR were Streptococcus pneumoniae (15.1%) and Haemophilus influenzae (36.4%). There was a significant increase in PCR method compared to the culture in terms of bacterial detection rate (P = 0.05). Conclusion: Real-time PCR tests were very sensitive and fast. The prevalence of bacteria and multiple agents detected by real-time PCR versus culture was considerably higher.