Philip Ngunjiri
12 October 2008
Nairobi — Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis can now be diagnosed within a few hours rather than three-and-a-half months.
This following the unveiling of a DNA kit for tuberculosis diagnosis by a German manufacturer of diagnostic systems and therapeutic agents.
The kit, known as Molecular Assay Screening, introduced by Hain LifeScience East Africa last week, produces results in only three hours.
Hain LifeScience is now introducing the kit to medical practitioners, says Alice Gichane, general manager of Hain LifeScience.
The multi-drug resistant TB strain is resistant to at least two of the best first-line anti-TB drugs -- isoniazid and rifampicin.
The strain develops in the course of the treatment of fully sensitive TB and is the result of patients missing doses or failing to complete a course of treatment.
However, there are cases of multi-drug resistant TB strain with no previous history of TB treatment.
The new diagnostic kit, said Ms Gichane, will help doctors not only to reliably and accurately diagnose the disease but also to effectively treat the strain.
In Kenya and most of Africa, culture testing is used for patients who have failed to recover after two to five months on treatment for TB.
Treatment can run for up to one year, requiring regular visits to the clinic and draining patient's finances.
The multi-drug resistant TB strain requires an even longer period of treatment when detected, and it is often fatal if misdiagnosed, treated wrongly, or when treatment is delayed.
The new test can be used both on culture-based isolates and directly on smear positive sputum samples from patients with pulmonary TB.
Preliminary data suggests that the test can detect at least 90 per cent of multi-drug resistant TB strain cases in only a few hours.
Conventional methods of detecting drug resistance can take as long as two to three months to produce results.
According the World Health Organisation, tuberculosis kills more than 1.7 million people each year.
On the other hand, two billion people or one-third of the world's total population are infected with the TB bacillus.
TB is also the main cause of death among persons with HIV-infection.
In Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, tuberculosis is becoming a major threat to public health and economy as it affects mostly young adults in their productive years.
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