Tuberculosis diagnosis after bleach processing for early stage tuberculosis laboratory capacity building [Short communication]

• DOI: 10.5588/ijtld.11.0658
• Publication Date: 2012-10-03T11:19:57Z
• Authors: S. David; A. F. Sutre; A. Sanca; A. Mané; V. Henriques; C. Portugal; L. Sancho; A. Cardoso; E. Paixão; E. L. Duarte; C. Q. F. Leite; J. I. Salem; A. Antunes
• Keywords: Bleach; Tuberculosis diagnosis; GeneXpert MTB/RIF

The diagnosis of tuberculosis is seriously hampered in the absence standard biosafety laboratory facilities for specimen concentration and Mycobacterium culture. Within a twinning arrangement, heat-fixed direct smear sediment from 74 bleach-processed 20 non-processed specimens Cumura Hospital, Guinea-Bissau, were sent to Lisbon molecular evaluation rifampicin resistance. Sequence analysis 369 base-pair rpoB locus detected 3.2% (3/94) resistant specimens. To our knowledge, this represents first report on M. sputum, an alternative current diagnostic practice low-resource settings.