Molecular diagnosis of tuberculosis with emphasis on Xpert Mycobacterium tuberculosis assay – Clinical review

Tuberculosis (TB), due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis(MTB), remains a major public health issue. It causes ill health for approximately 10 million people each year and is one of the top ten causes of death worldwide. For the past 5 years, it has been the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, ranking above HIV/AIDS. Effective diagnosis of pulmonary TB requires the availability – on a global scale – of standardized, easy-to-use, and robust diagnostic tool that would allow the direct detection of both the MTB complex and the resistance to key drugs, such as rifampicin. The latter result can serve as a marker for multidrug-resistant (MDR) MTB and has been reported in >95% of the MDR-TB isolates. Here, we review some of the recent molecular methods in the diagnosis of TB.