Tuberculosis: Automated Test for Drug-Resistant TB Gives Results in Hours, Not Weeks

NY Times ^ | September 6, 2010 | DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

[neverdem]

A new automated test for drug-resistant tuberculosis gives accurate results in two hours instead of four to eight weeks, scientists said last week, and public health officials greeted the news enthusiastically, saying it could greatly speed up diagnosis.

In the new test, known as Xpert MTB/RIF, a technician deposits a sputum sample in a cartridge, which is inserted into a machine. According to a study published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, the test is 98 percent accurate when compared with positive results from the old method — examination of sputum by a trained microscopist. It was only about 73 percent accurate on the hardest-to-analyze samples, but that is better than microscopy, which is wrong about half the time. And it was 98 percent accurate in detecting antibiotic resistance, the step that adds weeks to the old process.

The test was developed by Cepheid, a private company, and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics in Switzerland, with support from the National Institutes of Health and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

It has some limitations...

[neverdem]

Rapid Molecular Detection of Tuberculosis and Rifampin Resistance

FReebie

[Sioux-san]

And this is important why? Well, because of all the horrific diseases that were once under control in our country that are now rearing their ugliness within the bodies of “undocumented aliens.” Refugess, whatever....

[sinanju]

Hey! I thought the HeroRats could out-sniff any machine in detecting TB in lunger samples when they weren’t sniffing out mines:

http://www.herorat.org/how-we-help/tb-detection

[HiTech RedNeck]

The difficulty comes not in identifying the presence of TB, but in telling which cases need the newer, costlier antibiotics to treat. Now if these little rodents can be trained to detect that too, that would be great. But no mention of that.

By the way can the rodents detect drugs? That would give real meaning to “ratting out” narcotics. And a rat only needs 6000 euro to train, as opposed to four times that much for a dog.

[Minn]

sputum

That's a great word.

[crazydad]

Wow I work in the lab up here in Placerville and now we have to send our AFBs to the health dept to found out... Will be nice to have the results faster so we can take the standard Precausions...

[crazydad]

It is also yummy when we get a nice bloody sputum sample from a bronch wash or one out of an intebated pts tube... Makes for a lovely after dinner treat. EWWW!

[neverdem]

Micro ping, comment# 1 links a FReebie.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[vetvetdoug]

I saw this and thought to myself about the old days when we had to differentiate between scotochromogens and photochromogens. It took a whole rack of cultures and a month to find the little bastards. Not to mention the stain techniques to penetrate the dipicolenic capsule of the little pistols. There was times I steam fried the whole slide and couldn't see a thing.