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Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,1 Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Baltimore, Maryland,2 Instituto de Doenças do Tórax-Hospital Universitário Clementino Fraga Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil3
Received 29 June 2007/ Returned for modification 9 September 2007/ Accepted 21 October 2007
Specimen dilution has been proposed as a strategy to minimize amplified Mycobacterium tuberculosis direct (MTD) test inhibition (N. Pollock, J. Westerling, and A. Sloutsky, Am. J. Clin. Pathol. 126:142-147, 2006; A. Sloutsky, L. L. Han, and B. G. Werner, J. Clin. Microbiol. 42:1547-1551, 2004). We evaluated the impact of respiratory specimen dilution on MTD test accuracy in a public health laboratory. The difference in MTD test sensitivity between the dilution and conventional methods was 15.9% (P = 0.001) for smear microscopy-positive specimens and –3.6% (P = 0.38) for smear microscopy-negative specimens.
Published ahead of print on 31 October 2007.
| Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. | Clin. Microbiol. Rev. |
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| Clin. Vaccine Immunol. | ALL ASM JOURNALS |
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