Identificación de Mycobacterium tuberculosis mediante el análisis del perfil de ácidos micólicos por cromatografía Iíquida de alta presión (HPLC)

In order to validate a high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) technique to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, 164 Mycobacterium spp. strains were evaluated between October 1994 and October 1995 at the Corporacion para Investigaciones Biologicas (CIB). All strains carne from patients and belong to CIB's Bac:ariological Laboratory's collection of strains and were identified by traditional biochemical tests as well as HPLC. The biochemical tests were considered to be the gold standard. According to these, 80 strains were identified as being M. tuberculosisand 84 as being different to M. tuberculosis. Two strains of M. tuberculosis were identified incorrectly by HPLC; one of these was identified as being M. bovis-BCG and the other as M. intracelulare. The test's sensitivity was 97.5%, the specificity 100%, the positive predictive value (PPV) 100% and the negative predictive value (NPV) 97.7%.