Prevalence of non-tuberculosis mycobacteria among samples deposited from the National Tuberculous Reference Laboratory of Iran (2011-2018)

• Published in: Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine
• Main Authors: Saman Ayoubi, Parissa Farnia, Poopak Farnia, Jafar Aghajani, Jalaledin Ghanavi, Ali Akbar Velayati
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2021
• Subjects: diagnosis; iran; non-tuberculosis mycobacterium; prevalence; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.4103/1995-7645.329007; https://doaj.org/article/ecceeb6950954069804e60145a5df355

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM) among the samples deposited from the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory of Iran between 2011 and 2018. Methods: The study evaluated the prevalence of NTM among specimens from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis symptoms (n=15 771) deposited at the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory of Iran from 2011 to 2018. Detection of Mycobacterium (M.) tuberculosis was based on presence of a 190-bp amplicon from IS6110 insertion sequence using Tb1 and Tb2 primers, and amplicon-negative specimens were tested for NTM and M. tuberculosis (refractory to IS6110 amplification) using restriction fragment length polymorphism PCR of hsp65 amplicon fragment. Results: A total of 7 307 (46.33%) M. tuberculosis and 658 (4.17%) NTM specimens were found, the latter mainly comprising M. abscessus (10.18%), M. avium (2.28%), M. chelonae (8.97%), M. intracellulare (10.49%), M. kansasii (4.71%), and M. simiae (56.08%). Conclusions: As treatment for NTM differs from that for M. tuberculosis, accurate detection of Mycobacterium sp. is of public health significance.