Rapid diagnosis and treatment are extensively important for preventing transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis : In 1994, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, has published recommendations for the rapid diagnosis in the laboratories, in which smear result should be reported within 24h, detection and identification within 10 to 14 days, and susceptibility within 15 to 30 days. New technologies, therefore, should be implemented in the laboratory.
There have been significant advances in the practice of microbiology. Nucleic acid amplification, rapid culture system, antigen detection, and ATP assay system have provided new approaches to the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis. In the present paper, we review studies which evaluated the reliability, rapidity, and requisite diagnostic capability for each method. Furthermore, we propose an appropriate test algorithm in the clinical laboratories.

*Laboratory Medicine, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto 606-8507