Comparative Study of Fast Plaque Assay and Real Time PCR for Detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Pulmonary Samples

Tuberculosis has become the cause of major diseases burden in developing countries such as India. Its etiological agent is a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). This calls for the need for a rapid and accurate method of diagnosis as TB detection if not diagnosed timely can be proved to be fatal. In the present study, 90 pulmonary samples were taken into the study and a comparative study on the conventional method of Fast Plaque Assay (FPA) and Real-Time PCR (RT-PCR) was performed to find out a more accurate and reliable method of diagnosis. Of all the samples 18 samples were only diagnosed by RT-PCR but failed to be diagnosed by FPA which proves RT-PCR to be a more sensitive, rapid, reliable, and accurate method of diagnosis. Moreover, the percentage positivity rate of total samples again revealed that RT-PCR (44.4%) is more efficient than FPA (13.33%).