DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i10.013

Pages: 3867-3871

Tuberculosis is a chronic infection, potentially of lifelong duration, caused by two species of mycobacteria M. tuberculosis and rarely, M. bovis. Today one third of the world’s population is infected with this disease. Emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis is another public health quandary. Our study aims to detect drug resistance cases by using combination of automated culture system and molecular method for rapid and accurate diagnosis. The study was conducted over a period of 16 months from January 2016 to June 2017, among 210 clinically suspected patients having infection with Mycobacterium species. Sputum and BAL fluid from all clinically suspected cases of Tuberculosis among all age groups and both sexes attending DOTS microscopy center and TB chest department were collected for further identification. Total 210 suspected cases for pulmonary tuberculosis were included. Among 210 patients 38.5% were AFB smear positive, 77.1% clinical samples were culture positive and 15 sample were found to be MDR. In our study we concluded that, liquid culture methods and Line Probe assay are costly but the test is rapid and more accurate, which helps in rapid detection of drug resistant strains of Mtb.