Do the eyes have it? Performance of molecular detection of tuberculosis on fresh and paraffin embedded tissues, including those with no visible tissue
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Little has been published on the performance of tuberculosis PCR with respect to the quality of tissue specimens. Laboratories often receive liquid samples from fine-needle aspirates with no visible tissue for testing. The sensitivity of tuberculosis (TB) PCR on these specimens is unknown. METHODS: TB PCR was compared to culture or a combination of clinical and histopathological evidence of tuberculosis; a separate analysis excluded patients with current or previous treatment. RESULTS: Sixty-five patients had 81 positive samples; 69 by PCR and 43 by culture. Excluding those on treatment, 51 of 57 (89%) were PCR positive versus 43 of 61 (70%) by culture. 44 samples had 'no visible tissue' noted. Five were PCR positive; only one was culture positive. At least two samples were falsely negative. CONCLUSIONS: Sensitivity of TB PCR is superior to culture on tissue. Five of seven TB cases with no visible tissue were PCR positive. The quality of the specimen deserves comment, as the two (5%) known false negatives are of concern.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The inadequate samples likely reflect extended delays in patient presentation and biopsy collection, as symptoms were typically nonspecific and progressed for months prior to a correct diagnosis.
“This likely reflects the extended delays in patient presentation and biopsy collection [66], as symptoms were typically nonspecific and progressed for months prior to a correct diagnosis.”
From Head and Neck Tuberculosis: A Rare Diagnosis and the Role of Surgical Biopsy and Histopathological Evaluation in Extrapulmonary Disease (2025) · cites this paper as [66]
Cites
Linasmita, P., Srisangkaew, S., Wongsuk, T., Bhongmakapat, T., & Watcharananan, S. P. (2012) · Clinical Infectious Diseases · doi:10.1093/cid/cis401 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Patwardhan, S. A., Bhargava, P., Bhide, V., & Ds, K. (2011) · Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology · doi:10.4103/0255-0857.90173 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Mogoantă, C. A., Osman, A., Georgescu, A.-M., Mitroi, A. M., Busuioc, C. I., Tănase, I., Cioboată, R., Liliac, I. M., Cimpeanu, O. L., & Ciolofan, M. S. (2025) · Pathogens · doi:10.3390/pathogens14050479 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“This likely reflects the extended delays in patient presentation and biopsy collection [66], as symptoms were typically nonspecific and progressed for months prior to a correct diagnosis.”
- Authors
- McKew, G. L., Dubedat, S. M., & Chan, R. C.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (AU)
- Corresponding author
- McKew, Genevieve L
- ORCID
- McKew, Genevieve L
- Venue
- Journal of Clinical Pathology
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2014-08-27
- Volume
- 67
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1104-1105
- ISSN
- 0021-9746 (ISSN-L)
- 1472-4146
- OpenAlex
- W2318627936
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Clinical Pathology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Tuberculosis Research and Epidemiology
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Surgery › Diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Surgery › Infectious Diseases and Tuberculosis
- Keywords
- tuberculosis, molecular detection, paraffin-embedded tissue, fresh tissue, fine needle aspirate, sample quality, sensitivity, cultural comparison, false-negative results, histopathology
- MeSH terms
- DNA, Bacterial, Humans, Retrospective Studies, Sensitivity and Specificity, Specimen Handling, Tuberculosis, Paraffin Embedding, Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction, Biopsy, Fine-Needle
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
