David, SSutre, ASanca, AMané, AHenriques, VPortugal, CSancho, LCardoso, APaixão, EDuarte, ELeite, CSalem, JAntunes, A2013-08-122013-08-122012Int J Tuberc Lung Dis. 2012 Nov;16(11):1535-71027-3719http://hdl.handle.net/10400.10/990The diagnosis of tuberculosis is seriously hampered in the absence of standard biosafety laboratory facilities for specimen concentration and Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture. Within a laboratory twinning arrangement, heat-fixed direct smear and sediment from 74 bleach-processed and 20 non-processed specimens from Cumura Hospital, Guinea-Bissau, were sent to Lisbon for molecular evaluation of rifampicin resistance. Sequence analysis of a 369 base-pair rpoB locus detected 3.2% (3/94) resistant specimens. To our knowledge, this represents the first report on the molecular analysis of M. tuberculosis from bleach-processed sputum, an alternative to current diagnostic practice in low-resource settings.engTuberculoseTuberculosisClinical laboratory techniquesMycobacterium tuberculosisjournal article