Prediction of drug resistance in M. tuberculosis: molecular mechanisms, tools, and applications.

Management of Tuberculosis is complicated by the emergence of drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and this poses a threat to the success of Tuberculosis control programmes. Drug susceptibility testing by culture is time-consuming and technically difficult. It is known that resistance to drugs is due to a number of genomic mutations in specific genes of M. tuberculosis. These mutations in combination with molecular techniques can be used as markers for drug resistance, since drug susceptible isolates lack the corresponding gene mutations. This review focuses on molecular mechanisms, methods and applications as a possible new diagnostic tool for the early molecular detection of drug resistance in M. tuberculosis.