Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major public health problem in the developing world, partly due to a steady increase in the frequency of Mycobacteria tuberculosis strains becoming resistant to one or more of the first line anti-TB drugs. Microscopy is the most available diagnostic technique but the method cannot test for drug resistance. Culture method is the gold standard important in diagnosis and drug resistance testing, but it has the problem of prolonged turnaround time, high costs and unavailability. The Gene Xpert method for XpertMTB/Rif assay, allows rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis/multiple drug resistance Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB/MDRTB). The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of the XpertMTB/Rif assay method in the diagnosis of MTB and drug resistancetuberculosis (DR-MTB) within one year of its installation in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Nigeria. Sputum samples from 586 patients who presented at the DOTS laboratory of the hospital between 17 th June 2014 and 17 th June 2015 were processed using the XpertMTB/Rif assay machine. One hundred and sixteen (116) (19.8%) of the 586 screened patients had MTB positive results, 8 (6.9%) of the 116 MTB positive patients had rifampicin resistant TB. Also total of 336 out of whole total of 586 patients had HIV positive and 42(12.5%) of 336 HIV positive patients had MTB positive results. These depict the usefulness of Xpert assay method in MTB/MDRTB diagnosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Early diagnosis is important in TB disease control. The use of rapid diagnostic test (RDT) kits drastically reduces the time required for reaching clinical diagnosis and this has been successful in diagnosis of HIV, syphilis and more recently malaria to mention a few. What is the case for RDTs for diagnosis of tuberculosis? Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate and compare the performances of results produced by different rapid diagnostic test strips available in the Nigerian market for TB. A total of one hundred and eighty-four (184) subjects aged between 12-68 years were recruited for the study. These were referred from the chest clinic with a high index of suspicion of TB. Sputum samples were collected for AFB detection using the Ziehl-Neelsen and Auramine-phenol staining techniques. Blood samples were collected for serology tests using five (5) different rapid diagnostic test kits from different manufacturers, HIV status determination and evaluation of the haematological parameters we carried out. As a result, there were significant differences in the results obtained between AFB tests and serological methods with P<0.01 in all cases. The sensitivity and specificity respectively of the five different kits were 28.6% and 32.0% (Nova), 19.5% and 29.2% (Fistech), 9.1% and 27.1% (Diaspot), 12.4% and 27.7% (Abcon) and 12.4% and 27.7% (Global).finally, findings from this study show that these rapid serological tests are poor in diagnosing tuberculosis and cannot be recommended for use in this environment.