Clinical evaluation of PCR for rapid diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in patients with respiratory specimens that were smear positive but culture negative for Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Polymerase chain reaction test in induced sputum of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis

“…Also, when culture is used as the gold standard test, specimens containing non‐cultivable organisms may lead to a positive PCR and be considered as false‐positive result . To support the hypothesis that PCR is more sensitive than culture, it would be useful to have 2 or more positive PCR results in patients with negative cultures, but we collected only 1 sample per patient for PCR test in our study. Al Zahrani et al demonstrated that the yield of PCR test increased with the greater number of IS samples that were evaluated.…”