Polymerase chain reaction using IS6110 primer to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical samples.

Nucleic acid amplification using IS6110 primers to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical specimens has been extensively used as laboratory tool for the diagnosis for tuberculosis. Despite it's dramatic scientific value in practice, it is not as sensitive as expected for the detection of M. tuberculosis. The results of the study suggest that PCR using 123 bp fragment of DNA belonging to IS6110 is specific (95.6%) but only has a sensitivity of 30% to detect M. tuberculosis in clinical specimens.