Airway Microbiology in Children with Cystic Fibrosis: A Prospective Cohort Study from Northern India

Objective: The objective of this study is to find the organism profile and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in children with cystic fibrosis (CF).

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Hospital-based study.

Intervention: Sputum cultures/throat swabs were collected from the study population. Relevant details like anthropometry, systemic examination findings and investigations were entered in a pre-designed format. Sputum culture was subjected to microbiological analysis at the hospital microbiology laboratory.

Main outcome measure: Prevalence of positive sputum/cough swab culture in CF patients, their organism profile and antibiotic sensitivity.

Results: A total of 63 patients were enrolled in the study. A total of 136 organisms were grown in our study population. Thirteen different organisms were isolated, which included five gram-positive bacteria, six gram-negative bacteria, eight Candida spp. and one filamentous. Antibiotic sensitivity profile of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed excellent sensitivity to all the aminoglycosides, piperacillin-tazobacteum and polymixin, similarly methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant S. aureus and Enterococcus spp. were uniformly sensitive to vancomycin, linezolid and teicoplanin. Fungal isolates showed 100% sensitivity to all the antifungals tested including azoles and amphotericin B.

Conclusion: We observed 61% of culture positivity for different organisms in our study. Staphylococcus aureus and P. aeruginosa were the most frequently isolated organisms. Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates were largely sensitive to aminoglycosides, carbapenems and polymixin. We found an unusually higher incidence of enterococcal infection in our study cohort with few vancomycin-resistant isolates.