BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global health problem. According to the 2013 Global Report on Tuberculosis, 8.6 million people developed TB in 2012 and 1.3 million died from the disease. An estimated 13% of people who developed TB in 2012 were HIV-positive, and 75% of these lived in Africa. While pulmonary TB is the commonest form of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, extrapulmonary T...

Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is a common entity n children and also in adults with prediosposing factors such as AIDS, alcoholism, diabetes mellitus, malignancy and use of steroids. TBM often leads to considerable morbidity and mortality. We present here CSF culture positive cases of TBM reported between 2000 and 2004 from our institution. CSF specimens from patients suspected of TBM were proce...

Tubercle bacilli, which survived heat fixation, were detected with a slide culture technique which allowed the entire smear to be examined. Both conventional flame fixation and the use of a controlled hot-plate failed to render tuberculous sputum smears safe for further handling. Smears which were stained with the phenol-auramine method failed to yield growth on culture. If delay between prepa...

The Ziehl-Neelsen stain is compared with three alternative methods of staining tubercle bacilli in paraffin sections: Fite's method (1938); a modification by Armstrong and Price (1947) of Fite's method; and a fluorescent method using the auramine-phenol stain. The fluorescent method was found to be the most effective of the four methods and its use is recommended as a routine tool in diagnostic...

Morphology continues to be indispensable for primary isolation and recognition of bacteria. Under controlled conditions of growth, microscopic and gross characteristics of most bacterial species are constant, replicable, and have high differential values. This report is concerned with microculture morphology of Mycobacterium 13 mm) was then placed over each planted area. The plates were incubat...

OBJECTIVE To compare four laboratory methods in the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis. METHODS Respiratory secretion specimens were collected from 160 patients suspected of having pulmonary tuberculosis. Direct testing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis was carried out using Ziehl-Neelsen and auramine staining. In addition, culture in Löwenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium and polymerase chain reaction ...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) is an increasing public health concern worldwide. On a global scale it has a devastating impact in developing nations. Genital TB, an extrapulmonary form, is not uncommon particularly in areas where pulmonary TB is prevalent. Genital TB may be asymptomatic or may even masquerade as other gynaecological conditions; hence, diagnosis requires a high degree of suspicion...

BACKGROUND Sputum microscopy is the only tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic available at peripheral levels of care in resource limited countries. Its sensitivity is low, particularly in high HIV prevalence settings. Fluorescence microscopy (FM) can improve performance of microscopy and with the new light emitting diode (LED) technologies could be appropriate for peripheral settings. The study aimed t...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world's deadliest communicable diseases. In Ethiopia, tuberculosis patients have different pattern of health care seeking behavior. They usually adopt other approaches like traditional healers and spiritual holy water sites before consulting public health facilities. This study was aimed to assess the prevalence of smear positive pulmonary tubercu...