Cécile Uwizeye

Publications (3)10.41 Total impact

• Article: Fine-needle aspiration, an efficient sampling technique for bacteriological diagnosis of nonulcerative Buruli ulcer.

  Miriam Eddyani, Alexandra G Fraga, Fernando Schmitt, Cécile Uwizeye, Krista Fissette, Christian Johnson, Julia Aguiar, Ghislain Sopoh, Yves Barogui, Wayne M Meyers, Jorge Pedrosa, Françoise Portaels
  [show abstract] [hide abstract]
  ABSTRACT: Invasive punch or incisional skin biopsy specimens are currently employed for the bacteriological confirmation of the clinical diagnosis of Buruli ulcer (BU), a cutaneous infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. The efficacy of fine-needle aspirates (FNA) using fine-gauge needles (23G by 25 mm) for the laboratory confirmation of BU was compared with that of skin tissue fragments obtained in parallel by excision or punch biopsy. In three BU treatment centers in Benin, both types of diagnostic material were obtained from 33 clinically suspected cases of BU and subjected to the same laboratory analyses: i.e., direct smear examination, IS2404 PCR, and in vitro culture. Twenty-three patients, demonstrating 17 ulcerative and 6 nonulcerative lesions, were positive by at least two tests and were therefore confirmed to have active BU. A total of 68 aspirates and 68 parallel tissue specimens were available from these confirmed patients. When comparing the sensitivities of the three confirmation tests between FNA and tissue specimens, the latter yielded more positive results, but only for PCR was this significant. When only nonulcerative BU lesions were considered, however, the sensitivities of the confirmation tests using FNA and tissue specimens were not significantly different. Our results show that the minimally invasive FNA technique offers enough sensitivity to be used for the diagnosis of BU in nonulcerative lesions.
  Journal of clinical microbiology 05/2009; 47(6):1700-4. · 4.16 Impact Factor
• Article: Primary culture of Mycobacterium ulcerans from human tissue specimens after storage in semisolid transport medium.

  Miriam Eddyani, Martine Debacker, Anandi Martin, Julia Aguiar, Christian R Johnson, Cécile Uwizeye, Krista Fissette, Françoise Portaels
  [show abstract] [hide abstract]
  ABSTRACT: Tissue specimens collected from patients with clinically suspected Buruli ulcer treated in two Buruli ulcer treatment centers in Benin between 1998 and 2004 were placed in semisolid transport medium and transported at ambient temperature for microbiological analysis at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. The impact of the delay before microbiological analysis on primary culture of Mycobacterium ulcerans was investigated. The length of storage in semisolid transport medium varied from 6 days to 26 weeks. Of the 1,273 tissue fragments positive for M. ulcerans DNA by an IS2404-specific PCR, 576 (45.2%) yielded positive culture results. The sensitivity of direct smear examination was 64.6% (822/1,273 tissue fragments). The median time required to obtain a positive culture result was 11 weeks. Positive cultures were obtained even from samples kept for more than 2 months at ambient temperatures. Moreover, there was no reduction in the viability of M. ulcerans, as detected by culture, when specimens remained in semisolid transport medium for long periods of time (up to 26 weeks). We can conclude that the method with semisolid transport medium is very robust for clinical specimens from patients with Buruli ulcer that, due to circumstances, cannot be analyzed in a timely manner. This transport medium is thus very useful for the confirmation of a diagnosis of Buruli ulcer with specimens collected in the field.
  Journal of clinical microbiology 02/2008; 46(1):69-72. · 4.16 Impact Factor
• Article: Application of the hsp65 PRA method for the rapid identification of mycobacteria isolated from clinical samples in Belgium.

  Anandi Martin, Cécile Uwizeye, Krista Fissette, Pim De Rijk, Juan Carlos Palomino, Sylvia Leao, Françoise Portaels
  [show abstract] [hide abstract]
  ABSTRACT: Biochemical identification of mycobacteria is slow and many times fail to produce correct results. We compared PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (PRA) of hsp65 and biochemical methods for the identification of mycobacteria from human samples in Belgium. PRA was found useful in the identification of mycobacteria and simple to implement as a quick method in the laboratory.
  Journal of Microbiological Methods 11/2007; 71(1):39-43. · 2.09 Impact Factor