Clinical Evaluation of the Mycobacteriophage-Based Assay in Rapid Detection of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis in Respiratory Specimens

Abstract

The phage assay has the potential clinical utility as a simple means of rapid and accurate detection of live Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli; however, its performance has been inconsistent across various studies, which highlights that the assay requires a high degree of quality control demanding infrastructure and its performance is vulnerable to common adversities observed in "out of research" practice settings like storage, transport and cross-contamination.

Diagnostic value of mycobacteriophage based fast plaque technique for early detection of pulmonary tuberculosis

“…83% of TB cases within two days and with a wide range of sensitivity between 27-92% and specificity of 88-100% in previous studies. 2,3,4,6,11,12,13 Studies analyzed the performance of FPTB method and we summarized these results in Table 3. FPTB gives quick results compared with smear microscopy and conventional culture, using LJ medium which took up to eight weeks.…”

The Use of Phage for Detection, Antibiotic Sensitivity Testing and Enumeration

“…Although the phage assay is simple to perform, inexpensive and does not require any sophisticated or dedicated equipment, it does require the samples to be Following the appropriate sampling preparation the assay is carried out following the procedure described and presented in this figure. transferred to a dedicated microbiology laboratory. This was perceived to be a disadvantage over conventional sputum smear testing when diagnosis was being performed in clinics in remote areas where reliable, temperature controlled transportation of samples is difficult (Mbulo et al, 2004;Prakash et al, 2009). …”