[Microbiological diagnosis of tuberculosis].

Tuberculosis continuous to be the world's most important infectious disease in addition to malaria and AIDS. One-third of world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Every tenth of those people will develop active tuberculosis in his or her lifetime. The global tuberculosis incidence rate is falling; however, the rate of decline is less than 1 %. While microscopy and culture are still the gold standard in laboratory diagnostic, remarkable technical progress has recently been made, upgrading the speed and quality of mycobacteriology diagnostic services. The development of improved nucleic acid amplification tests enables the detection of M. tuberculosis-DNA as well as the determination of drug resistance pattern direct from the specimen. Another advance is the implementation of ex vivo interferon-gamma release assays for the detection of latent tuberculosis. This paper includes a brief summary of current state-of-the-art diagnostic tools which are applied for laboratory diagnosis of tuberculosis and drug susceptibility testing.