Colonization of Pneumocystis jirovecii in Patients Who Received and not Received Corticosteroids Admitted to the Intensive Care Unit: Airborne Transmission Approach

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) is responsible for pulmonary infection in immunocompromised patients. The current study aimed at investigating the frequency of Pneumocystis colonization in patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU) and evaluating the relationship between PCP and Pneumocystis colonization. METHODS: The current cross sectional study was conducted on bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluids of 100patients collected from surgery and neurosurgery ICUs with different underlying corticosteroid therapy conditions. Patients were divided into 2 groups (patients receiving and not receiving corticosteroids). Direct examination on BAL fluids was performed by the Gomori methenamine silver and Giemsa staining techniques. Additionally, 2 filtered air samples of the 2 above mentioned units were collected. A nested-PCR targeted mtLSUrRNA gene and sequencing were used to identify Pneumocystis spp. RESULTS: In direct microscopy, 31 out of 100 hospitalized patients (31%) showed positive results. Twenty-three (46%) of smear positive patients were from the group of patients receiving corticosteroid, the other 8(16%) were from the group of patients not receiving corticosteroids (P= 0.001). Pneumocystis jirovecii DNA was detected in 77 out of 100 BAL samples by nested-PCR (77%) in which 40 (52%) and 37 (48%) samples were obtained from the patients receiving and not receiving corticosteroids, respectively. Pneumocystis genome was observed in 1 of the 2 filtered air samples. CONCLUSION: A significant number of patients receiving corticosteroids were also colonized by P. jirovecii that may be predisposed to PCP or be transmitted to susceptible patients. A significant relationship was observed between the mean hospital stay and detection rate.