Performance of a rapid phage-based test, FASTPlaqueTB, to diagnose pulmonary tuberculosis from
sputum specimens in South Africa.
Two of these 4 patients defaulted TB treatment and had culture-positive
sputum specimens when they returned after treatment interruption.
However, in this study, the 292K mutant was found in
sputum specimens from these 2 patients on days 7 or 15, respectively, after initiation of antiviral treatment.
Calculating the consensus sequence, we obtained the genome of the influenza A (H7N9) virus directly from the
sputum specimen of this patient.
If the first
sputum specimen is smear-positive and NAA-positive, the patient can be presumed to have TB without additional NAA testing.
Yeast cells belonging to Candida spp were isolated from 20 cases, 16 isolates belonged to candida albicns & 2 each of candida gullermondii & candida tropicalis, Moulds were recovered from 2
sputum specimens. Both belonged to Aspergillus species, considering morphology on SDA and microscopic morphology in Lactophenol cotton blue (LCB) mount, one species was identified as Asp.
tuberculosis had been isolated from a sputum sample obtained from patient 1, the patient's physician had informed staff of DOH's TB Program that TB had not been suspected, that a
sputum specimen obtained from the patient had grown Streptococcus pneumoniae, and that the patient's symptoms had abated with treatment for pneumococcal pneumonia.
tuberculosis resistant to INH and RlF was isolated from the first follow-up
sputum specimen; the inmate was admitted to the infirmary and treated with INH, RIF, and ethambutol (EMB).
Shortly thereafter, a line probe assay (GenoType MTBDRplus; HAIN Lifescience, Nehren, Germany) performed by Southeastern National TB Center (Gainesville, FL, USA) on the culture of the
sputum specimen obtained at admission indicated an inhA point mutation but no mutation in the RRDR region of the rpoB gene, which suggested that the isolate was INH resistant but RIF susceptible.
The GeneXpert cartridges will be used to identify the disease within 90 minutes instead of sending a
sputum specimen to a laboratory from where the results would only return after several days or even weeks.
The technology detects the DNA in TB bacteria using
sputum specimen in less than two hours.