Many thanks for alerting us to the microbiological profiles of microbial keratitis from our colleagues in the North East of England study. As our article had urged other authors to analyse their own local microbial data, we are delighted to see this work being undertaken in other areas of the UK.
This data highlights the need for individual local analysis in order to tailor appropriate antibiotic therapy. Similar rates of bacteria, fungi, and acanthamoeba are seen across the two centres. Indeed the increasing trend in gram positive pathogens, less than 150 miles from our centre is interesting. A similar but not statistically significant trend was seen in Moraxella keratitis infections, which chimes with our findings.
It would be interesting to know if our colleagues intend on analysing antimicrobial sensitivities for this data, and what specific statistical analysis was performed to produce these findings. It is possible that if shorter time intervals are used for the data, subtler trends may be detected.
Our colleagues report a higher ratio of positive scrape results than our series; 44.6% from over the 10 year period. It would be interesting to know under which conditions our colleagues perform corneal scraping in the context of suspected microbial keratitis.
We commend our colleagues in the North-East for their hard work, and hope that other centres are able to find the time to join in!
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Walkden, A., Tan, S.Z., Au, L. et al. Response to: A 10-year analysis of microbiological profiles of microbial keratitis: the North East England study. Eye 32, 1417–1418 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-018-0086-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-018-0086-3