Abstract：
The diagnosis and monitoring of tuberculosis treatment is difficult as many patients are unable to produce sputum. This means that many patients are treated on the basis of clinical findings and consequently some will be exposed to anti-tuberculosis drugs unnecessarily. Moreover, for those appropriately on treatment and unable to produce a sputum sample, it will be impossible to monitor the response to treatment. We have shown that stool is a potential alternative sample type for diagnosis of tuberculosis. Currently, available protocols like the Xpert MTB/RIF use DNA as a target to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in stool but DNA survives long after the organism is dead so it is not certain whether a positive test is from an old or a partially treated infection. The TB MBLA only detects live organisms and thus, can be used to follow the response to treatment. In this chapter, we describe a protocol for TB-MBLA, an RNA-based assay, and apply it to quantify TB bacteria in stool.
摘要：
结核病治疗的诊断和监测是困难的，因为许多患者无法产生痰。这意味着许多患者基于临床发现进行治疗,因此一些患者将不必要地暴露于抗结核药物。此外，对于那些接受适当治疗并且无法产生痰样本的人，监测对治疗的反应是不可能的。我们已经表明，粪便是诊断结核病的潜在替代样本类型。目前,XpertMTB/RIF等现有方案使用DNA作为目标来检测粪便中的结核分枝杆菌，但DNA在生物体死亡后仍存活很长时间，因此无法确定阳性检测是来自旧感染还是部分治疗的感染。TBMBLA只检测活的生物体，因此，可用于跟踪治疗反应。在这一章中,我们描述了一个TB-MBLA的协议，基于RNA的检测，用它来量化粪便中的结核细菌。
