Improved Diagnosis and Treatment Monitoring of Tuberculosis Using Stool and the Tuberculosis Bacterial Load Assay (TB-MBLA)

实验方案
发表日期：

2024年

查看全文

Emmanuel Musisi,
Bariki Mtafya,
William Saava Wambi,
Josephine Zawedde,
Abdulwahab Sessolo,
Willy Ssengooba,
Natasha Walbaum,
Nyanda Elias Ntinginya,
Stephen H. Gillespie,
Wilber Sabiiti

摘要

The diagnosisDiagnoses and monitoring of tuberculosis treatment is difficult as many patients are unable to produce sputum. This means that many patients are treated on the basis of clinical findings and consequently some will be exposed to anti-tuberculosis drugs unnecessarily. Moreover, for those appropriately on treatment and unable to produce a sputum sample, it will be impossible to monitor the response to treatment. We have shown that stool is a potential alternative sample type for diagnosisDiagnoses of tuberculosis. Currently, available protocols like the Xpert MTB/RIFRifampicin (RIF) use DNA as a target to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in stool but DNA survives long after the organism is dead so it is not certain whether a positive test is from an old or a partially treated infection. The TB MBLA only detects live organisms and thus, can be used to follow the response to treatment. In this chapter, we describe a protocol for TB-MBLATB molecular bacterial load assay (TB-MBLA), an RNA-based assay, and apply it to quantify TB bacteria in stool.