The Official Journal of the Turkish Society Of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (KLİMİK)

Past Issue

June 2024, Volume 6, Issue 2

Review Article

Discontinuation of Nucleos(t)ide Analogues in HBeAg Negative Chronic Hepatitis B Patients: Risks and Benefits

Pınar Korkmaz and Neşe Demirtürk

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) remains a major threat to global public health, affecting 296 million people worldwide. CHB increases the risk of cirrhosis, liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma, causing liver-related morbidity and mortality. All these risks can be prevented with antiviral treatment. Although there is no curative treatment for CHB today the virus can be effectively controlled with existing (...) Read More

Original Article

COVID-19 Vaccines and COVID-19 in People Living with HIV

Muhammed Fatih Karaşın and others

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a strain of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, spread rapidly around the world and was defined as a pandemic on March 12, 2020, by the World Health Organization. As of June 2023, more than 767 million cases were confirmed globally, along with 6.9 million deaths. Read More

The COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Healthcare Workers: An Exploration of Hesitancy Reasons and Suggestions to Improve Vaccination Rates

Bahar Madran and others

The global impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been profound, affecting billions of lives worldwide. As of June 13, 2024, the virus has infected approximately 704 million people and led to a staggering death toll of 7 million. In the fight against this devastating virus, the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines have been identified (...) Read More

The Incidence and Risk Factors of Early Periprosthetic Joint Infections

Zeynep Tekin-Taş and others

Hip and knee arthroplasties stand out as the most prevalent surgical interventions employed to address joint deformities, predominantly stemming from osteoarthritis associated with an aging population. In Turkey, a total of 34,240 hip arthroplasties and 81,109 knee arthroplasties were conducted in 2022. Meanwhile, in the United States of America (...) Read More

Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Various MRSA Clinical Isolates and the Impact of Glycopeptide MICs on Clinical and Microbiological Outcomes

Elif M. Sarıcaoğlu and Fügen Yörük

Staphylococcus aureus, particularly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is a major cause of serious hospital and community-acquired infections and is associated with increased health care costs, prolonged antibiotic treatment and hospitalization, morbidity, and mortality. While glycopeptides (...) Read More

Causative Microorganisms in Community-Acquired Urinary Tract Infections and Risk Factors for the Development of Infection with Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase-Producing Species

Rüveyda Korkmazer and others

Urinary tract infection (UTI) affects approximately 150 million people worldwide every year and is encountered in all age groups. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp., group B streptococcus, and Enterococcus spp. are the most frequent species. The increase in antibiotic resistance rates among these agents leads to failures in empirical treatment and causes an increase in mortality, morbidity rates, and costs. Read More

The Impact of Reporting the Same-Day Identification and Antibiotic Susceptibility Test Results on the Treatment of Bloodstream Infections

Mervenur Demir and others

The global increase in the rate of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacterial infections in recent years is an important public health problem that limits the therapeutic options. The issue becomes particularly critical in cases of bloodstream infections (BSI) in which delay is associated with high mortality rates. Bacteria grown in blood cultures (BC) must be subcultured on the solid media (...) Read More

Prospective Clinical Follow-Up Results of Infective Endocarditis

Merve Arslan and others

Infective endocarditis is a clinical condition that affects the endocardial surface of the heart, involving natural or prosthetic heart valves and intracardiac devices.  It is a high-cost and high-mortality infectious disease with an increasing incidence and is more frequently diagnosed with advancing diagnostic methods. Along with well-defined cardiac (previous endocarditis, presence of intracardiac prosthetic materials, (...) Read More

Brief Report

Rapid Bacterial Identification from Positive Blood Cultures by MALDI-TOF MS Following Short-Term Incubation on Solid Media

Mervenur Demir and Gülşen Hazırolan

Sepsis is a life-threatening infection with a mortality rate above 25%. Rapid identification of the microorganisms that cause bloodstream infections is important for choosing targeted and timely antimicrobial treatment. The implementation of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (...) Read More

History of Infectious Diseases

Urinalysis in Medical Diagnosis: the Historical and Contemporary Usage

Oğuz Usta and others

One of the indispensable abilities of a young medieval doctor was the capability to read urine colour, given that urine was regarded as a divine fluid and considered to be a window to the human body. The observation of urine enabled the detection of bodily changes, and it served as the first laboratory test for thousands of years. Similarly, the practice of uroscopy, (...) Read More

Correspondence

ChatGPT as a Novel Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology: Correspondence

Hinpetch Daungsupawong and Viroj Wiwanitkit

Tunçer et al. brought us interesting observations from the study “How Reliable is ChatGPT as a Novel Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology?”. In conclusion, 200 questions about infectious diseases from different platforms were used in the study, along with recommendations from reliable sources. The replies were predicated on (...) Read More