New approaches to the diagnosis of tuberculosis and the determination of the drug susceptibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to antimicrobial drugs

A study was carried out to determine the sequence of application of microbiological and molecular genetic methods in the algorithm for accelerated laboratory diagnosis of tuberculosis. We set threshold values of the concentration of DNA of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in various diagnostic samples for the most effective application of microarrays technology in determining the drug susceptibility of MTB to anti-TB drugs. The inclusion of the Sensititre MycoTB microbiological test in the algorithm for laboratory diagnostics of tuberculosis together with the test-system “TB-TEST” makes it possible to establish the quantitative characterization of strains (the level of susceptibility/resistance to a wide range of antimicrobial agents) for the selection of anti-TB drugs and optimization of the treatment.