Use of an immunochromatographic kit for the rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from broth cultures.

In settings of high human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence, culture confirmation, preferably by liquid culture, is required for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). However, long delays with phenotypic identification offsets the short turnaround time of liquid cultures. We report here the advantages of using a commercial immunochromatographic (ICT) assay targeting the Mycobacterium tuberculosis protein 64 (MPT-64) Ag and compare it with the Accuprobe MTB complex molecular probe assay. The performance of the ICT kit was excellent, with sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of respectively 97%, 100%, 100%, and 92%. The kit requires a 15-min assay time, is easy to perform and is a good method for simplifying the diagnosis of TB.