Veena Sharma, Prem Raj Singh,Narotam Sharma and Jagdish Kandpal
Rapid, low cost and sensitive methods play significant role in the treatment and management of Tuberculosis. Study includes utility of Phage Amplification Technology in parallel with in-house mpb-64 based PCR, microscopy, and BACTEC 460 Tuberculosis culture method for Mycobacterium Tuberculosis complex detection. Six hundred pulmonary specimens which include 300 sputum and 300 bronchial alveolar lavage (BAL) specimens), were considered for the study. The sensitivity, of AFB smear, PCR and FAST Plaque Tuberculosis (FPA) assay for the BAL were 50.9%, 90.2% and 88.67%respectively. While in case of sputum specimens the sensitivity, of AFB smear, PCR method and FASTPlaque TB assay test were 58.25%, 87.37%, 85.85% respectively. In conclusion, FPA proved to be sensitive, cheap, relative to the PCR and rapid than the culture. It gives result within 48 hours comparative to the culture which takes 2-6 weeks for the detection. In contrast to PCR, where it can not differentiate dead and live bacilli, FPA can detect live bacilli
