UTILITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF GENEXPERT OVER CONVENTIONAL METHODS FOR DIAGNOSIS OF PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is a global health burden and can cause potential infection in any system of the body. Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) is most common presentation, but the diagnosis of TB remains elusive because of none of biochemical or serological test is invalid. During the development of END TB strategy, the gene expert (CBNAAT) test was first endorsed by WHO. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective observational study; conducted in the Department of Microbiology, Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur Uttar Pradesh, India. All patients suspect of PTB fulfilling, inclusive criteria were enrolled for PTB confirmation. All kind of clinical samples pertaining to PTB were processed in TB laboratory for Ziehl-Neelsen stain microscopy, solid culture (Lowenstein-Jensen (L. J.) and gene expert. All data were collected and analyzed using SPSS ver. 2017. Results: During the study period, a total of 542 clinical PTB cases were enrolled. Among which distribution of clinical samples was (404/74.53% sputum, 104/19.18% gastric aspirate, 34/6.27% broncho-alveolar lavage: BAL). Among 542 total samples enrolled, 102 (18.81%) positive for AFB, 166 (30.64%) culture-positive, but after using 28 kDa antigens based MPT-64 test only 124 (74.69%) culture-positive were confirmed as MTBC. Among 542 samples, 146 (26.93%) samples were confirmed as positive for MTB by gene expert (CBNAAT). Conclusion: The gene expert MTB/RIF assay is efficient, reliable, and confirmatory technique for MTB. Its sensitivity and specificity make this technique a very reliable tool for diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from cases of TB suspects. Simultaneously, it has an advantage of the detection of multidrug-resistant cases.