Background: Tuberculosis is an important cause of death in some countries. The world health organization estimates that if stronger measures are not taken up to control the prevalence of this disease, from 2000 to 2020 a billion people will be infected by the bacterium. According to time consuming of common detection methods of Mycobact-erium tuberculosis such as culture, it is necessary to evaluate a rapid detection tests such as PCR. Rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis may have profound effects in patients' care According to importance of rapid detection and treatment of tuberculosis and for determine of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of PCR by using IS6110 this study was done in Kashan university of medical science.
Methods: A total of 248 sputum samples from patients suspected of mycobacterial diseases were studied. DNA was extracted by boiling method. IS6110 PCR method by a specific pair of primers designed to amplify 123bp and 245bp sequences of the insertion sequence, 6110, in the M. tuberculosis genome was used to analyze sputum samples.
Results: 32 out of 248 (12.9%) of samples had positive culture. PCR yielded a sensitivity of 93.8% and specificity of 99.1% for the diagnosis of TB patients with TB confirmed by culture. There were two out of 32 (6.3%) PCR-positive cases among the patients with non-TB disease.
Conclusion: The findings of the present study indicate that Multiplex PCR may provide a faster method of detecting tuberculosis, thus enhancing diagnostic procedures and we conclude that the performance of an IS6110 PCR assay is valuable in the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis.