title: Drug-susceptibility testing in TB: current status and future prospects.
abstract: The rising number of resistant and multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains and the emergence of extensively drug-resistant strains substantiate the urgent demand for rapid and reliable techniques for the detection of drug-resistant TB. In recent years, a multitude of techniques for rapid drug-susceptibility testing have been designed and evaluated. Two different strategies for the assessment of drug resistance can be followed; phenotypic determination has been common practice for years, whereas more recently the genetic detection of mutations that confer for drug resistance has been established. Novel liquid culture-based drug-susceptibility testing techniques have been evaluated; several of them have proved their reliability and accuracy, while others need more evaluation or a different performance due to biosafety risks. Among the molecular tests, line-probe assays seem to be the most promising tools for a rapid and very specific and sensitive detection of multidrug-resistant M. tuberculosis.
authors.affiliation: Forschungszentrum Borstel, Nationales Referenzzentrum für Mykobakterien, Parkallee 18, D-23845 Borstel, Germany. erichter@fz-borstel.de.
authors.forename: Elvira
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rüsch-Gerdes
authors.forename: Doris
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hillemann