Microscopic-observation drug-susceptibility assay was more sensitive than standard tests for diagnosing tuberculosis

摘要

Tuberculosis kills 1.7 million people every year. Sputum microscopy is thenprimary method for diagnosing tuberculosis in resource-limited countriesnwhere 95% of tuberculosis cases occur (1), but it can only detect, at best,n50% of the cases. Sputum processing and fluorescence microscopy arenmore sensitive than conventional direct microscopy (2, 3).