Table 1.
Demographic and clinical characteristics of pulmonary TB patients and non-TB healthy individuals.
Fig 1.
Venn diagram showing the distribution of stool samples for detection of M. tuberculosis by using Xpert, AFB microscopy and culture.
Among 102 stool samples from PTB patients, total 92 were positive for M. tuberculosis by Xpert assay, whereas, 55 and 36 samples were positive by AFB microscopy and culture, respectively.
Table 2.
The sensitivity and specificity of Xpert MTB/RIF assay, microscopy and culture for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in stool samples of pulmonary TB patients and non-TB healthy individuals.
Table 3.
The sensitivity and specificity of Stool Xpert for detection of rifampicin susceptibility compared with the results of sputum culture.
Fig 2.
Correlation between the bacilli load and Xpert Ct values in stool/sputum samples.
There were significant correlations between the bacillary load as determined by smear microscopy and corresponding cycle-threshold (Ct) values of rpoB probes of Xpert MTB/RIF assay for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Xpert positive stool (n = 92)/sputum (n = 102) samples. The bacillary load of each sample was determined by counting the total number of bacilli in 100 microscopic fields. The best-fit lines and spearman regression R2 values are shown.