Use of the BacT/Alert MB Mycobacterial Blood Culture System for Detection of Mycobacteria in Sterile Body Fluids Other than Blood

The definitive diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis is made by a positive body fluid culture result. Conventional culture methods require centrifugation or filtration of body fluid (peritoneal, pleural, synovial, or pericardial fluid) in order to improve the sensitivity. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the feasibility of the direct inoculation, at the patient’s bedside, of up to 5 ml of uncentrifuged fluid onto BacT/Alert MB culture bottles (bioMérieux, Durham, NC). Tuberculosis remains one of the major global public health problems (7) and often remains undiagnosed. Because of the low sensitivity of conventional techniques for the recovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (4), the diagnosis of extrapulmo-nary tuberculosis, in many cases, is made on the basis of the clinical presentation, the history of contacts, a positive tuber-culin test result, and characteristic abnormalities on the chest radiograph. The isolation of mycobacteria from body fluids remains a challenge owing to the low bacterial charge charac-terizing such samples (1, 2). Conventional culture method