Utility of Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction in Detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis

This study aimed to assess the value of real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). Samples from 192 patients with suspected MTB were examined by RT-qPCR and an improved Löwenstein–Jensen (L-J) culture method. To evaluate the diagnostic usefulness of RT-qPCR in detecting MTB, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for RT-qPCR was generated, and the area under the curve (AUC) as well as a cutoff value was calculated. Using the L-J culture method as the gold standard, accuracy of the RT-qPCR method for detecting MTB was 92.7%, with sensitivity and specificity of 62.5% and 97.02%, respectively. In comparison with the improved L-J culture method, the AUC of RT-qPCR ROC curve was 0.957, which was statistically significant (p