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Bacteriology

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Submitted By candi24
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Microbiology in the News
Candice Shaw
ITT Technical Institute

Microbiology in the News
The study in this article was done in a high volume TB/HIV clinic. The purpose of the study in this article was to experiment and see are there new ways to find out what stage a patient with TB is at who have also been affected with the HIV virus, as opposed to using the old ways of sputum microscopy and cultures to provide treatment. With this experiment, it showed that using the Xpert MTB/RIF testing allowed health care providers to detect TB much earlier and be treated. With earlier treatment it is with hopes that the infection time length will be shorter along with treatment time.
It was thought that if the TB is treated earlier this may decrease the rate of mortality in HIV-infected patient (Cox). However the study showed that there was no direct correlation between the arm test and the smear microscopy.
This article was not able to hold my interest during the entire article. It was actually quite confusing. This was an unblended study in which there was not a controlled group. Some of the patients weren’t even tested in the clinic at hand. This would affect the results of the study as we wouldn’t know exactly how long some of the individuals had been affected with TB and how the TB test was performed at previous locations. Some patients with the disease treatment had been started and others had not, this is why it could not be confirmed whether the Xpert or the sputum would work best. The article skipped around quite a bit with left me wondering when and why they tested the individuals they had. There were plenty of variables and no controls.
This article definitely relates to the field of microbiology as is tests the bacteriology of different diseases. However, I think the test should have been more controlled which would have led to the results being more

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