Rapid Pyrazinamide Drug Susceptibility Testing using a Closed-Tube PCR Assay of the Entire pncA gene.

ABSTRACT: The continued use of pyrazinamide in the treatment of tuberculosis in the absence of a rapid, accurate and standardized pyrazinamide drug susceptibility assays is of great concern. While whole genome sequencing holds promise, it is not yet feasible option in low resource settings as it requires expensive instruments and bioinformatic analysis. We investigated the diagnostic performance of a closed-tube Linear-After-The-Exponential (LATE)-PCR assay for pyrazinamide susceptibility in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Based on a set of 654 clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture isolates with known mutations throughout the pncA gene as determined by Sanger sequencing, the assay displays excellent sensitivity of 96.9% (95% CI: 95.2-98.6) and specificity of 97.9% (95% CI: 96.1-99.7). In a subset

SUBMITTER: Whitfield MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7060184 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature