Identification of mycobacteria by using INNO LiPA.

I have read with interest the recent paper of Suffys et al. (1) concerning the identification of 157 mycobacterium strains by using the INNO LiPA Mycobacteria (LiPA) assay. The same journal had published, 1 year ago, a similar paper, which I coauthored, on 238 strains (2), the results of which are now substantially confirmed. I feel, however, that Suffys et al. did not take it into due account; in fact, they quote it cursorily on two occasions and inappropriately. In the first case, the authors state that their results are in contrast with ours as their Mycobacterium abscessus strains reacted with LiPA probes MCH-1 and MCH-2 and as all of their Mycobacterium kansasii strains that were MKA-1-positive belonged to PCR restriction enzyme analysis (PRA) group I. I do not think, on the contrary, that there is any contrast; in fact, as the LiPA system does not make any distinction between Mycobacterium chelonae and M. abscessus, we behaved likewise. Consequently, the fact that among our M. chelonae sensu lato strains there were strains reacting with all of the MCH LiPA probes does not imply that M. chelonae sensu stricto strains reacted with MCH-2 and all the more so since no strain labeled as M. abscessus was present in our panel. Furthermore, regarding M. kansasii, our paper did not made any mention of PRA; it compared the results of LiPA with those of the widely used AccuProbe assay and highlighted an interesting correlation between the reactivity of the firstand second-generation AccuProbe assays and the different M. kansasii-specific LiPA probes. In the second case, the authors do not seem to realize that our discrepant case, a strain identified as Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) intermediate with LiPA and as Mycobacterium intracellulare with the AccuProbe assay, fits exactly with their two strains, MAC intermediate with LiPA and M. intracellulare PRA group I.