Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials

Background: Conventional methods for susceptibility testing require several months before results can be reported. However, rapid methods to determine drug susceptibility have been developed recently. Phage assay have been reported as a rapid useful tools for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The aim of this study was to apply the Phage assay for rapid detection of resistance on Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in Cuba. Methods: Phage D29 assay was performed on 102 M. tuberculosis strains to detect rifampicin resistance. The results were compared with the proportion method (gold standard) to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of Phage assay. Results: Phage assay results were available in 2 days whereas Proportion Methods results were obtain in 42 days. A total of 44 strains were detected as rifampicin resistant by both methods. However, one strains deemed resistant by Proportion Methods was susceptible by Phage assay. The sensitivity and specificity of Phage assay were 97.8 % and 100% respectively. Conclusion: Phage assay provides rapid and reliable results for susceptibility testing; it's easy to perform, requires no specialized equipment and is applicable to drug susceptibility testing in low income countries where tuberculosis is a major public health problem. Background Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is estimated that about one-third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, more than eight million new cases of active TB occur annually and the estimated global annual mortality from this disease is close to two million people [1]. Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), caused by strains resistant to at least isoniazid (INH) and rifampicin (RMP), is considered an emergent disease as well as the consequence of inadequate treatment [2]. WHO has estimated that approximately 460.000 MDR-TB cases occur Published: 21 April 2006 Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials 2006, 5:11 doi:10.1186/1476-0711-511 Received: 30 January 2006 Accepted: 21 April 2006 This article is available from: http://www.ann-clinmicrob.com/content/5/1/11 © 2006 Yzquierdo et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials 2006, 5:11 http://www.ann-clinmicrob.com/content/5/1/11