Clinical usefulness of Mycobacterium tuberculosis/NTM real-time polymerase chain reaction in diagnosis of tuberculosis

Background Tuberculosis (TB) management and prevention of further spread is crucially based on early and prompt diagnosis. Even though conventional methods are the gold standard for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), they are time consuming and do not detect nontuberculous mycobacteria in most cases. The present study evaluated Anyplex MTB/NTM real-time (RT)-PCR assay (Seegene) for TB diagnosis in pulmonary and extrapulmonary TB cases in comparison with culture on Lowenstein-Jensen as a gold standard for diagnosis of MTB. Patients and methods The study included 100 patients with suspected TB: pulmonary TB represented 68 patients and extrapulmonary TB represented 32 patients. All pathological samples were stained by Ziehl-Neelsen staining (ZNS), cultured on Lowenstein-Jensen media and processed for PCR by the Anyplex MTB/NTM RT-PCR. Results Anyplex MTB/NTM RT-PCR showed a sensitivity and specificity of 100 and 65.5%, respectively, when compared with the sensitivity and specificity of ZNS, which were 87.2 and 79.3%, respectively, in the clinically suspected pulmonary TB group. However, in the clinically suspected extrapulmonary TB group, Anyplex MTB/NTM RT-PCR had sensitivity and specificity of 100 and 79.2%, respectively, when compared with those of ZNS, which were 75 and 100%, respectively. Conclusion The use of Seegene Anyplex MTB/NTM assay for detection and differentiation of pulmonary and extrapulmonary TB in our area is more convenient and accurate compared with ZNS.