Immuno-diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum， and reduction of timelines for its positive cultures to within 3?h by pathogen-specific thymidylate kinase expression assays.

Laboratory diagnosis of Tuberculosis (TB) is traditionally based on microscopy and or culture. Microscopy is however， only sensitive to a specified degree of bacillary load not present in HIV co-infected persons. Traditional cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb)， on the other hand， take weeks to read-thereby delaying the critical decision whether or not， to treat. Although nucleic acids amplification tests (NAATS) applied directly on sputum or cultures can increase the sensitivity for TB diagnosis among those with HIV co-infection as well as reduce time-lines for positive culture detection， they do not replace the need for smear microscopy and culture. We have previously proposed the M. tb DNA-synthetic enzyme thymidylate kinase (aka TMKmt) as an organism-specific growth and proliferation biomarker to reduce time-lines for detection of positive TB cultures. In this study， we explored the secretory levels of TMKmt in M. tb cultures and sputum， towards improving the overall laboratory diagnosis of TB.