Background
Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains a major global public health concern. Extra-pulmonary tuberculosis accounts for 15% of the global tuberculosis burden. Urinary tract tuberculosis is one of the most common and severe forms of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis in clinical practice. Diagnosis of urinary tract tuberculosis by Gen X-pert MTB/RIF assay from developing countries including Ethiopia is limited. Thus, this study was aimed to compare Gene X-pert MTB/RIF assay with the convectional diagnosis methods.
Methods
A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis and suspected for urinary tract tuberculosis patients at University of Gondar Specialized Referral Hospital from February 2020 to June 2020 G.C. Non-randomized purposive sampling technique was used to select study participants. To detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a urine sample was collected. Then, Ziehl Nielsen and fluorescence microscope, Gene X-pert Real-time PCR were performed to detect the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Sociodemographic, clinical data, and laboratory data were collected and entered into EPI-Info version 3.5.3 and then transferred to SPSS version-20 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were summarized as percentages, means, and standard deviations.
Results
A total of 64 study participants were enrolled in this study, 64.2% (41/64) were males and 30% (19/64) were in the age group of 31–45 years. Moreover, 71.9% (46/64) and 57.8% (37/64) study participants were rural residences and illiterate respectively. Among the 64 study participants, 4.69% (3/64) were positive for urinary tuberculosis by Gene X-expert. However, 1.56% (1/64) was positive by fluorescence microscopy, and there was no urinary tuberculosis detected by Ziehl Nielsen examination method.
Conclusion and recommendation:
The prevalence of urinary tract Mycobacterium tuberculosis using Gene X-pert and fluorescence microscopy was 4.69% (3/64) and 1.56% (1/64), respectively. Gene X-pert has higher detection rate than the conventional methods. Therefore, it is better to develop a guideline on how to use Gen x-pert for the diagnosis for urinary tract tuberculosis in urine samples.