NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Researchers at the University of Oviedo in Spain have developed an isothermal assay for Mycobacterium tuberculosis that is as sensitive and specific as a PCR-based assay, and could potentially enable rapid testing for the infection in low-resource settings.

Tuberculosis caused 1.5 million deaths and 6 million newly diagnosed infections in 2014. Cultures and microscopy are problematic diagnostic methods because they can take a long time or have low sensitivity, while existing molecular testing is sometimes too complex and expensive.