Diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: An Egyptian experience

Tuberculosis is prevalent throughout the world including the developing and industrialized countries. Every 15 seconds, someone in the world dies from TB. Left untreated, a person with active TB will infect an average of 10 to 15 other people every year. Diagnosis of active TB patients and screening of contacts is the cornerstone for controlling spread and subsequent eradication of TB.In order to improve TB diagnosis, rapid and reliable tests are needed. In the present study, we aimed to reach a sensitive and rapid method for the laboratory diagnosis of active TB disease in patients and latent TB infection in their household contacts. We recommend using more than one single test to reach accurate diagnosis for different states of TB.