Assess the Diagnostic Accuracy of GeneXpert to Detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Rifampicin-Resistant Tuberculosis among Presumptive Tuberculosis and Presumptive Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Patients

• Published in: Microbiology research Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 91 - 108
• Main Authors: Ramachandra, Venkateswari, Brammacharry, Usharani, Muralidhar, Aaina, Muthukumar, Anbazhagi, Mani, Revathi, Muthaiah, Muthuraj, Soundappan, Govindarajan, Frederick, Asha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Perugia MDPI AG 01.03.2024
• Subjects: Acids; Acquired immune deficiency syndrome; AIDS; Assaying; Automation; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Disease transmission; Drug resistance; drug resistant; Isoniazid; Light emitting diodes; Lymphatic system; Microscopy; Mortality; Multidrug resistance; Multidrug resistant organisms; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Pandemics; rifampicin; Rifampin; Sensitivity; specificity; Tuberculosis; Pakistan; India
• ISSN: 2036-7481; 2036-7481
• DOI: 10.3390/microbiolres15010006

GeneXpert MTB/RIF is a rapid molecular diagnostic tool capable of simultaneously detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance. This study aimed to assess the diagnostic precision of GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay to detect pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis and evaluate the performance for detecting of rifampicin resistance. Of 37,695 samples, 7156 (18.98%) were tuberculosis-positive, and 509 (7.11%) were rifampicin-resistant. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, disease prevalence, and accuracy of the GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay for pulmonary tuberculosis were 99.87% (95%CI: 99.75–99.94), 99.92% (95%CI: 99.88–99.95), 99.71% (95%CI: 99.54–99.82), 99.97% (95%CI: 99.93–99.98), 21.38% (95%CI: 20.92–21.86), and 99.91% (95%CI: 99.87–99.94), respectively. For extrapulmonary tuberculosis, the sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, disease prevalence, and accuracy of GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay accounted for 99.45% (95%CI: 98.73–99.82), 99.84% (95%CI: 99.73–99.92), 98.70% (95%CI: 97.73–99.25), 99.93% (95%CI: 99.84–99.97), 10.64% (95%CI: 9.99–11.31), and 99.80% (95%CI: 99.68–99.88), respectively. Despite its high sensitivity for detecting tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance, GeneXpert MTB/RIF had contradictory results for 20.5% of cases among patients with smear-negative results and 54.9% of cases among patients with a high risk of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Of 46% fluoroquinolone-resistant cases, 16.56% (26/157) were multidrug-resistant tuberculosis isolates, and 4.02% (20/498) were isoniazid-resistant, a characteristic distribution leading to about 17.2% of fluoroquinolone-resistance events and relevant marker gyr-A mutations in MDR tuberculosis isolates. Further, our study indicated that increased fluoroquinolone resistance among rifampicin-resistant and isoniazid-resistant tuberculosis endangers the success of newly endorsed MDR-TB regimens.