Microbiological Diagnosis of Infectious Uveitis to Pathogenic Fastidious Germs

The Mediterranean Infection microbiology laboratory is the national Reference Laboratory for the diagnosis of infectious Uveitis. The essential problem of the Uveitis is the etiological diagnosis since currently in 60% of cases no etiological diagnosis is brought out despite the deployment of routine diagnostic tests. The prognosis of the Uveitis is generally good but 15% approximately of Uveitis are evolving on a chronic mode which decreased faster than the Visual acuity of the eye reached that can lead to blindness in bilateral cases of Uveitis. Different works of the literature identified a few pathogenic microorganisms, viruses and bacteria as being responsible for uveitis, including within the particular framework of the endophtalmies. Recent work allowed to highlight the place of fastidious bacteria (Bartonella spp., Tropheryma whipplei, Rickettsia spp., Coxiella burnetii, Borrelia spp.) in these Uveitis. Despite all his investigations, is estimated that 20-30% of Uveitis likely to be of infectious origin are not documented by the methods used in routine. Our research project is to use a new microbiological diagnostic strategy of uveitis, allowing detection of the fastidious pathogens of infectious Uveitis who are not diagnosed by laboratory methods used in diagnostic routine. This new diagnostic strategy is to automatically detect the presence of a pathogen fastidious in cell culture using the same patient's serum to reveal a positive culture, based on the assumption that this serum contains antibodies specific pathogen tedious.