Background
s:In recent years, the incidence of tuberculosis has increased mainly in high-risk populations. Classical laboratory diagnostic methods for tuberculosis have low sensitivity and time consuming procedures. Thus, it is important to identify the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the clinical specimens earlier than the culture results for the decision to initiate anti-tuberculosis therapy. Lee et al. reported a species-specific repeated sequence from a Korean M. tuberculosis isolate, which was later proved to be a part of REP13E12 repetitive sequence.
Materials and Methods:In this study, we compared the acid-fast staining, culture, Amplicor MTB (Roche), and REP13E12 PCR for detection of M. tuberculosis using 88 clinical samples. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were compared.
Results
:REP13E12 PCR showed equivalent score to Amplicor MTB. Both PCR-based methods showed better score than conventional stain and culture methods.
Conclusion
:This result suggested that REP13E12 PCR is helpful for the rapid detection of the M. tuberculosis from clinical specimens.