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Updated: Jul 20, 2025
Diagnosing Pulmonary Tuberculosis with the Xpert MTB/RIF Test
Published on: April 9, 2012
A meta-analysis of the accuracy of Xpert MTB/RIF in diagnosing intestinal tuberculosis
Yuan-Lin Ding1,2, Rui-Chao Yan1,2, Hao-Kai Chen2,3
1Department of Medical Laboratory Science, King Med School of Laboratory Medicine, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
Objective:
A detection method with high efficiency and accuracy is urgently needed in clinical work. The purpose of our study was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the Xpert MTB/RIF assay for intestinal tuberculosis (ITB).
Methods:
We searched PubMed and 4 other databases from their establishment to July 19, 2022, for published essays of diagnostic performance in which Xpert MTB/RIF was used to test patients with clinically suspected ITB. An assessment of the quality of the selected literature was conducted using QUADAS-2. We built forest plots by MetaDiSc software.
Results:
The pooled Xpert MTB/RIF sensitivity was 48%, and the specificity was 99%. Moreover, the positive likelihood ratio for ITB diagnosis was 21.61. The negative likelihood ratio was 0.54. There were substantial variations between the study estimates of sensitivity (I2 = 87.6%) and specificity (I2 = 82.4%).
Conclusion:
Intestinal TB is detected with limited diagnostic sensitivity by Xpert MTB/RIF but with high specificity. An Xpert-positive result may facilitate the rapid identification of ITB cases. Nevertheless, a negative result has less certainty in excluding the disease.
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