COMPARISON OF ETEST AND AGAR PROPORTION METHOD OF TESTING DRUG SUSCEPTIBILITY OFM. TUBERCULOSIS

摘要

Summary: Tuberculosis, particularly multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, is the leading cause of death attributable to a single pathogen The increase in drug resistant tuberculosis in recent years has made rapid testing of drug susceptibility of M tuberculosis imperative for therapy selection and prevention of spread of resistant organisms Therefore, Etest, a relatively rapid method for testing drug susceptibility of M. tuberculosis, was compared with the conventional proportion method Of the 40 isolates, 50% were resistant to Isoniazid and 30% resistant to Rifampicin by either method with a very good correlation between the two methods, although the Etest in 3 of the isolates was in discordance with the proportion method.