Role of CBNAAT in Detecting MDR- Tuberculosis in Northern India

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the deadliest infections responsible for millions of deaths yearly over the world from ancient time to till date. India is one of the high tuberculosis (TB) burden nations in the world accounting for nearly 20% of the worldwide rate constituting 9.4 million TB cases. India secures second position in harboring multi drug resistant (MDR) TB cases, i.e., around 99,000 cases. Standard sputum based strategies to detect pulmonary tuberculosis include sputum microscopy and culture. However, these traditional methods results in a delay in the detection of TB and in consequent beginning of treatment. To overcome such delays, in 2010, WHO endorsed a new molecular techniques CBNAAT (Xpert MTB/ RIF) which is a fully automated diagnostic test that simultaneously detects tuberculosis and rifampicin drug resistance associated with mutation of rpoB gene within few hours. In this review we present a general overview of TB including the pathogenesis, diagnosis as well as ability of CBNAAT to detect Pulmonary TB in humans.