Pretreatment cultures of bacilli from Indian patients with active pulmonary tuberculosisudadmitted to a controlled domiciliary chemotherapy study by the Tuberculosis ChemotherapyudCentre, Madras, were subjected to a series of in vitro tests designed to identify theudbacilli as human or bovine tubercle bacilli, or as anonymous mycobacteria. For the purposesudof comparison, pretreatment cultures from British patients with pulmonary tuberculosis wereudexamined by the same series of identification tests.udCultures identifiable as mammalian tubercle bacilli were obtained from all the 341udIndian patients admitted to the chemotherapy study. Tests for niacin production wereudcarried out on the cultures from 277 of these patients ; all gave positive results, indicatingudthat the bacilli in question were Mycobacterium tuberculosis var. hominis. The cultureudfrom the Indian patients yielded results similar to those of the cultures from the Britishudpatients in all the in vitro tests except the thiacetazone-sensitivity test. In this test theudIndian cultures differed from the British cultures, being on the average less sensitive andudshowing greater variation in sensitivity among themselves.
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