BACKGROUND The World Health Organization estimated in 2010 that 8.8 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases. About one-third of the world's population is infected and 10% will develop active TB disease. While cultures remain the international gold standard for diagnosing TB disease, in many other low-income countries, sputum smears remain the only and most accessible tool with which to diagnose act...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity of the fixed mathematical relationship between the annual risk of tuberculous infection (ARTI), the prevalence of smear-positive tuberculosis (TB) and the incidence of smear-positive TB specified as the Styblo rule, which TB control programmes use to estimate the incidence of TB disease at a population level and the case detection rate. METHODS Population-ba...

BACKGROUND Cervical cancer is the most common malignancy in women in Taiwan. In order to improve the detection of cervical lesions using the Papanicolaou (Pap) smear in screening, a number of adjunctive tests have been developed. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the utility of a magnified chemiluminescent screening examination (speculoscopy) combined with the Pap smear (PapSure) in dete...

BACKGROUND In 2007 WHO issued a guideline to improve the diagnosis of smear-negative and extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) in HIV-positive patients. This guideline relies heavily on the acceptance of HIV-testing and availability of chest X-rays. METHODS AND FINDINGS Cohort study of TB suspects in four tuberculosis (TB) clinics in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We assessed the operational performance ...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) case detection in women has remained low in developing world. This study was conducted to determine the proportion of smear positive TB among women with cough regardless of the duration attending family Planning (FP) and Maternal and child health (MCH) clinics in Dar es Salaam. METHODS We conducted a cross sectional study in all three municipal hospitals of Dar es...

58 cases of sputum smear negative pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) were reported to Kinta Health Department between January and June 2011. It was found that 47 cases (81%) were sputum smear negative cases. Six cases (10.3%) were actually sputum smear positive but were wrongly reported as smear negative. Five cases (8.6%) were misdiagnosed as tuberculosis. Majority of these patients (82.7%) sought c...

Figure 2. Bone marrow aspirate smear demonstrating blasts of myeloid lineage. Figure 1. Peripheral blood smear showing a myeloblast.

The development, evaluation, and World Health Organization (WHO) endorsement of the Xpert MTB/RIF automated real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay has generated considerable excitement as a revolutionary diagnostic test for tuberculosis. However, one of its limitations is the inability to determine which patients with pulmonary tuberculosis have sputum positive for acid-fast bacilli (A...

BACKGROUND Rapid and accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) is crucial to facilitate early treatment of infectious cases and thus to reduce its spread. To improve the diagnosis of TB, more rapid diagnostic techniques such as antibody detection methods including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based serological tests and immunochromatographic methods were developed. This study was des...

OBJECTIVES To assess the performance of Xpert MTB/RIF, an automated molecular test for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and resistance to rifampin (RIF), against smear microscopy and culture method for diagnosis of MTB infection. Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of 103 respiratory and 137 non-respiratory patient specimens suspected of tuberculosis at King Khalid University Hospital, Ri...