Nasrullah Malik, Karamat Ahmed Karamat, Tariq Butt, Shahid Abbasi, Javaid Usman.
Prevalence and drug susceptibility pattern of typical and atypical mycobacteria in Rawalpindi/Islamabad.
Pak J Pathol Jan ;9(4):4-8.

Tuberculosis is one of the major health problems in most of the developing countries like Pakistan. It is causing more deaths world wide than malaria and AIDS. Culture of M. tuberculosis is required to establish the diagnosis of tuberculosis. A study was carried out at AFIP Rawalpindi to evaluate the prevalence of typical and atypical mycobacteria in Rawalpindi/Islamabad in specimens from suspected tuberculosis patients. Conventional culture system was compared with the radiometric BACTEC system. One hundred specimens of suspected tuberculosis patients were applied on conventional culture media. Sixty among them were also applied on BACTEC culture system. Susceptibility of the isolates was tested against conventional antituberculosis drugs by agar dilution technique using L. J. medium. Resistance ratio method was adopted for interpretation of susceptibility. Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated from 28 and atypical mycobacterium from eight cases. BACTEC system remains a superior method in terms of rate as well as time of isolation. The isolates yielded significant level of resistance to all the conventional antituberculosis drugs. It is suggested that all clinically suspected case of tuberculosis should undergo thorough investigations. Rapid, easy and more sensitive methods of identification of typical and atypical mycobacteria need to be devised and adopted.

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