Muhammad Idrees, Aftab H Bhatti, Fazle Majeed Khan, Shaheen N Khan, Sheikh Riazuddin.
Detection of Rifampicin Resistant Mutants in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis by Polymerase Chain Reaction - Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;10(5):166-9.

Tuberculosis (TB), a highly contagious disease, is a scourge for mankind. Concomitant with the increased occurrence of TB, is the emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) particularly to rifampicin and isoniazid. In the present study, we have evaluated a rapid and simple technique `PCR-SSCP` for the detection of rifampicin resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis associated with mutations in the gene that is responsible for the synthesis of RNA polymerase enzyme. The information, that all the mutations in the RNA polymerase gene (rpo B) are clustered within a region of 23 amino acids, was used for the development of Polymerase Chain Reaction-Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism that detected rifampicin resistant mutations in 92.72% culture isolates of known multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. Our findings of the relation between RNA polymerase (rpo B) gene and resistance to rifampicin on molecular basis represents a next step towards the development of a rapid detection method for multidrug- tuberculosis cases of acute leukemia, which are difficult to diagnose on morphology and cytochemistry.

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