It has been recognized that management of the global TB problem can only he achieved with efficient and rapid diagnosis of the disease and the subsequent ap-propriate treatment of the patients. An innovative method, termed Phage Amplification Technology, uses bacteriophage to report the presence of viable my-cobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in a sample. Two products have been developed now by Biotic La-boratories LW, using this technology: FASTPlaque TB, which is a test for MTB detection and FASTPlaque TB-RIF for rifampicin susceptibility testing. In this study the performance of these technologies is compared with the results of conventional culture on Lowenstien Jen-sen (14) media and Mycobacteritun Growth Indicator Tubes (MGIT). This study included; SO tuberculous pa-tients and 20 patients with chest disease other than tu-berculosis served as control group (III). Newly diagnosed tuberculous patients were classified into group 1 and II (each, 25 patients) of sputum Ziehl Neeisen (ZN) pasitive • and ZN negative cases re-speeti.iely. From group I and 0, 25 patients were se-lected to perform rifampicin susceptibility testing served as group IV. Sputa were decontaminated, digested and concentrated by the standard NALC-NaOH treatment. From both groups I and II LJ slopes in duplicate were inoculated, culture on MGIT also was done. FASTPlaque TB test was performed for all patients. FASTPlaque Ttt RIF
'Department of Clinical Pathology,"Depanment of Chest Benha Faculty of Medicine
for rifampiciti susceptibility in comparison with the re-sults of MGIT susceptibility were done for group IV. This study confirmed that the mean time of detection of MTB by FASTPlaque TB test Is 2 days for the toe bercious patients (92% & 68% in group i and 11 re-spectively) with high significant difference In relation to the detection time by LJ medium (273± 3.8 days) in group 1 'land in group II (30.9±5.8 days). Meanwhile, the mean time of detection of MTB by MGIT was 7.5±1.9 days in 96% of group f and was 9.3±2.4 days in 76% of group II which is also higher than that of FASTPlaque TB test. For group 111 (control group), no growth could by de-tected by 14 medium, MGIT and FASTPlaque TB test indicating 100% specificity. For group IV, IS cases (60%) fampicin and 10 cases (40%) were resistant for ri-fampicin with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity in comparison with the results of MGIT. A combination of smear microscopy and FASTPlaque detected 80% of all TB positive specimens. FASTPlaque TB results were available within 4R hours kom receiving the samples, so rapidly we can.confirm TB in smear pos-itive and to provide quick and certain diagnosis in smear negative TB. FASTPiaque TB RIF lest is a rapid and reliable bac-teriophage based test to detect the rifampicin sus-ceptibility within two days also. The tests are easy to perform, require no specialized equipment, and rely on basic microbiological techniques. |
