Discordance across Phenotypic and Molecular Methods for Drug Susceptibility Testing of Drug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates in a Low TB Incidence Country.

With increasing incidence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), accurate drug susceptibility testing (DST) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to first-line drugs has become crucial for proper patient management. We evaluated concordance of DST results for 70 M. tuberculosis isolates across two phenotypic and two molecular methods: BACTEC 460TB, MGIT 960 system, GenoType MTBDRplus and DNA sequencing of gene segments most commonly implicated in conferring resistance to anti-TB drugs. Most (84%) M. tuberculosis isolates were multidrug-resistant. Twenty-four isolates yielded discrepant DST results. For rifampicin, isoniazid and streptomycin, 96%, 97% and 93% of isolates, respectively, were susceptible or resistant by all four methods, whereas for ethambutol, this agreement was observed for only 76% of isolates (P