Abstract:

The related information and data were collected from 519 patients who hospitalized at Shaanxi Provincial Tuberculosis Hospital from May 2015 to May 2017 and were suspected to have tuberculous meningitis. According to the Diagnostic Criteria for Tuberculous Meningitis which was developed by the International Collaborative Group on Tuberculous Meningitis in 2010, 354 cases were finally diagnosed as tuberculous meningitis while 165 cases were excluded. This study evaluated the value of different diagnostic techniques as follows in diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis: BACTEC MGIT 960 (MGIT 960) rapid liquid culture, RNA simultaneous amplification and testing (SAT-TB), polymerase chain reaction-fluorescence probe (PCR), and GeneXpert MTB/RIF (GeneXpert). The sensitivity of MGIT 960 rapid liquid culture, SAT, PCR-fluorescence probe and GeneXpert MTB/RIF in tuberculous meningitis diagnosis were 23.7% (84/354; 19.5%-28.4%), 7.6% (27/354; 5.2%-10.7%), 12.4% (44/354; 9.3%-16.2%) and 39.5% (140/354; 34.6%-44.7%) respectively; the specificity of those four techniques were 100.0% (165/165), 100.0% (165/165), 100.0% (165/165) and 99.4% (164/165), respectively. The sensitivity of GeneXpert MTB/RIF in tuberculous meningitis diagnosis was much higher than that of MGIT 960, SAT-TB and PCR-fluorescence probe.

Key words: Tuberculosis, meningeal, Nucleic acid amplification techniques, Molecular diagnostic techniques, Technology assessment, biomedical