ArticleBMC infectious diseases2024
Pooling sputum samples for the Xpert MTB/RIF assay: a practical screening strategy for highly infectious tuberculosis cases.
Article in BMC infectious diseases, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Tuberculosis in prisons: an integrated prevention and care cascade for a persistent structural epidemic.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Efficacy of Xpert MTB/RIF assay in detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis in samples with different results by smear and culture in a coastal city with high incidence of tuberculosis.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
The Xpert MTB/RIF test (Xpert) can help in the accurate screening of tuberculosis, however, its widespread use is limited by its high cost and lack of accessibility. Pooling of sputum samples for testing is a strategy to cut expenses and enhance population coverage but may result in a decrease in detection sensitivity due to the dilution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) by sample mixing. We investigated how the mixing ratio affected the detection performance of Xpert. We used frozen sputum samples that had been kept after individual Xpert assays of the sputa from Mtb-confirmed TB patients and non-TB patients. Our results showed that the overall sensitivity of the Xpert pooling assay remained higher than 80% when the mixing ratio was between 1/2 and 1/8. When the mixing ratio was raised to 1/16, the positive detection rate fell to 69.0%. For patients with either a high sputum Mtb smear score ≥ 2
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