Abstract：
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an infectious pathogen that requires biosafety level-3 laboratory for handling. The risk of transmission is high to laboratory staff, and to manage the organism safely, it is necessary to construct high containment laboratory facilities at great expense. This limits the application of tuberculosis diagnostics to areas where there is insufficient capital to invest in laboratory infrastructure. In this method, we describe a process of inactivating sputum samples by either heat or guanidine thiocyanate (GTC) that renders them safe without affecting the quantification of viable bacteria. This method eliminates the need for level 3 containment laboratory for the tuberculosis molecular bacterial load assay (TB-MBLA) and is applicable in low- and middle-income countries.
摘要：
结核分枝杆菌是一种传染性病原体，需要生物安全3级实验室进行处理。对实验室工作人员来说传播的风险很高,为了安全地管理有机体，有必要以高昂的费用建造高安全系数的实验室设施。这限制了结核病诊断应用于没有足够资本投资于实验室基础设施的领域。在这种方法中，我们描述了通过加热或硫氰酸胍（GTC）灭活痰液样品的过程，使其安全，而不影响活细菌的定量。这种方法消除了对结核病分子细菌负荷测定（TB-MBLA）的3级防护实验室的需要，适用于低收入和中等收入国家。
