Evaluation of FLASH - PCR forrapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from clinical specimens

Tuberculosis (TB) is the oldest known bacterial disease in humans. Due to the rise of morbidity in recent years, early diagnosis of the disease is necessary. In this study we used Fluorescent Amplification–Based Specific Hybridization (FLASH) PCR to targetIS6110 for rapid detection of M. tuberculosis (MTB). To investigate the important factors influencing the risk of TB, data from patients and their medical records were analyzed. The sensitivity and specificity of FLASH-PCR for detecting MTB were determined as 93.33% and 92.5%, respectively. The findings of this study have suggested that removal of the contaminants in FLASH-PCR sign ificantly reduced the detection time, and MTB was much more rapidly detected in the clinical specimens compared to the conventional culture and smear examination. Results of the medical survey showed that the majority of TB patients were males, over 51 years old, smokers, with pulmonary TB and normal chest X-ray (CXR). MTB can be rapidly detected inclinical specimens using FLASH-PCR in comparison with culture and smear examination.