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J. Clin. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/JCM.01313-07
Copyright (c) 2007, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Specimen dilution improves sensitivity of the Amplified Mycobacterium tuberculosis Direct (MTD) Test for smear microscopy-positive respiratory specimens

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Maryland State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Instituto de Doenças do Tórax/Hospital Universitário Clementino Fraga Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: DSUSAN1{at}JHMI.EDU.

	Abstract

Specimen dilution has been proposed as a strategy to minimize MTD test inhibition (8, 10). We evaluated the impact of respiratory specimen dilution on MTD test accuracy in a public health laboratory. The difference in MTD sensitivity between the dilution and conventional methods was 15.9% (p=0.001) for smear-positive, and -3.6% (p=0.38) for smear-negative specimens.