EasyNAT MTC assay: A simple, rapid, and low-cost cross-priming amplification method for the detection of mycobacterium tuberculosis suitable for point-of-care testing

More sensitive, rapid, and affordable diagnostic tools for pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) are urgently needed. This study aimed to assess the performance of EasyNAT MTC (abbreviation: EasyNAT) (Ustar Biotechnologies, China), a novel isothermal amplification method with a turnaround time of less than two hours that requires a few manual steps to process the sputum. Sputum samples from 249 patients with suspected PTB were subjected to smear, culture, Xpert MTB/RIF (Cepheid, USA) and EasyNAT assay testing. Of the 169 PTB patients, EasyNAT detected more PTB patients than Xpert (72.19% vs. 61.54%, P < 0.05, χ2 = 4.326). Both the Xpert assay and EasyNAT assay detected almost all the culture-positive sputa successfully, but EasyNAT yielded more positive results among the smear-negative and culture-negative PTB cases (44.59% (33/74) vs. 22.97% (17/74), P < 0.01, χ2 = 7.732). Although the specificity of EasyNAT was lower in contrast to Xpert [95.00% (76/80) vs. 98.75% (79/80)], the difference was not significant (P = 0.363, χ2 = 0.826). EasyNAT could be used as an initial test for PTB diagnosis due to its simplicity, rapid turnaround time, high sensitivity, and low cost.