Diagnosis of Tuberculosis: Novel Laboratory Methods

Despite advances in medical sciences in recent years, tuberculosis remains a worldwide health problem. Although there are many laboratory methods to accelerate the diagnosis, a delay in the definitive diagnosis of the disease is still a major clinical problem. Due to the slow growth of the causative agent, (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), isolation, identification, and other clinically important mycobacteria can take several weeks or longer. During the past few years, many methods have been provided for direct detection, species identification, and susceptibility testing of tuberculosis agents. Understanding the effectiveness and practical limitations of these methods is important to improve diagnosis. This article describes recent advances in the diagnosis of tuberculosis based on molecular and non- molecular methods.