[Evaluation of COBAS TaqMan: a real-time PCR-based diagnostic kit for mycobacteria]

The real-time PCR-based diagnostic kits, COBAS TaqMan MTB and COBAS TaqMan MAI (Roche Diagnostics, Tokyo, Japan), were developed to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and M. avium (MAV)/M. intracellulare (MIN), respectively. The TaqMan kits simultaneously perform amplification and detection of mycobacterial DNA to reduce assay time. We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of both TaqMan kits in 781 clinical specimens, and compared the results with those obtained from the AMPLICOR MTB and MAI kits. With smear-positive specimens, the TaqMan kits showed 100% concordance with AMPLICOR in MTB, MAV and MIN. With all specimens, the concordances of TaqMan with AMPLICOR were 99.1%, 99.0%, and 99.7% in MTB, MAV and MIN, respectively. Four specimens for MTB and one for MAV were AMPLICOR positive/TaqMan negative. Among them, two specimens were culture-positive for MTB and one for MAV. Three specimens for MTB, seven for MAV, and two for MIN were AMPLICOR negative/TaqMan positive. Among them, two specimens were culture-positive for MTB, seven for MAV, and one for MIN. In twelve out of 21 specimens in which AMPLICOR failed to activate PCR, TaqMan successfully determined the results which were in concordance with those of mycobacterial culture. Thus, our data suggest that the accuracy of TaqMan in detecting mycobacterial DNA is superior to that of AMPLICOR. We conclude that TaqMan, which is an easy and rapid DNA amplification test, is useful for detecting MTB, MAV and MIN.