Rapid Rifamycin Susceptibility Testing of Small-Volume Mycrobacterium tuberculosis Cultures by Detection of Precursor rRNA

Clinical laboratory identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex (MAC) has been facilitated in recent years by new DNA and RNA amplification tests (1 -4 ). However, drug susceptibility testing of slowly-growing mycobacteria remains time-consuming and costly, and the need for more rapid tests remains acute (5 ).