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Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Demonstrating a Multi-drug Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Amplification Microarray
Published on: April 25, 2014
The interpretation of nucleic acid amplification tests for tuberculosis: do rapid tests change treatment decisions?
S J Conaty1, A P Claxton, D A Enoch
1Department of Primary Care and Population Science, UCL Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Royal Free and University College Medical School, Royal Free Campus, London NW3 2PF, UK. s.conaty@pcps.ucl.ac.uk
Objectives:
To describe changes in treatment decisions after receipt of nucleic acid amplification (NAA) test for the diagnosis of M. tuberculosis.
Methods:
Retrospective notes review of treatment decisions in patients receiving a NAA test for suspected pulmonary or non-pulmonary tuberculosis at the Royal Free Hospital in London between March 2001 and February 2002. Notes were sought on a 50% random sample of patients with both smear and NAA negative specimens and all patients with other specimen results.
Results:
Two hundred and fifty patients were tested with NAA; clinical details were obtained on 138; 61 were ever treated. Seventeen (17/18) smear-negative patients were started on treatment after a positive NAA; none of six smear-negative patients treated prior to a negative NAA result had treatment stopped. Seventeen (17/21) smear-positive patients were treated prior to NAA result and all were NAA positive; treatment was delayed in four smear-positive patients until receipt of an NAA and one NAA-negative patient was not treated.
Conclusions:
In routine practice a positive test in an untreated smear-negative patient leads to decision to treat in almost all, but the proportion testing positive is low (8% or 17/219). In patients already on treatment negative tests did not lead to decisions to stop.
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