Abstract
The diagnosis of tuberculosis is seriously hampered in the absence of standard biosafety laboratory facilities for specimen concentration and Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture. Within a laboratory twinning arrangement, heat-fixed direct smear and sediment from 74 bleach-processed and 20 non-processed specimens from Cumura Hospital, Guinea-Bissau, were sent to Lisbon for molecular evaluation of rifampicin resistance. Sequence analysis of a 369 base-pair rpoB locus detected 3.2% (3/94) resistant specimens. To our knowledge, this represents the first report on the molecular analysis of M. tuberculosis from bleach-processed sputum, an alternative to current diagnostic practice in low-resource settings.
Publication types
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Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
MeSH terms
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Antitubercular Agents / pharmacology
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Bacterial Proteins / genetics
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Base Sequence
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Capacity Building / methods*
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Clinical Laboratory Techniques
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DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases
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Guinea-Bissau
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Humans
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Laboratories / organization & administration
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Microbial Sensitivity Tests
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Mycobacterium tuberculosis / drug effects
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Mycobacterium tuberculosis / isolation & purification
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Portugal
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Rifampin / pharmacology
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Sequence Analysis
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Sodium Hypochlorite / chemistry*
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Specimen Handling / methods*
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Sputum / microbiology
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Tuberculosis / diagnosis*
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Tuberculosis / drug therapy
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Tuberculosis / microbiology
Substances
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Antitubercular Agents
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Bacterial Proteins
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rpoB protein, Mycobacterium tuberculosis
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Sodium Hypochlorite
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DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases
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Rifampin