Tuberculosis is a major threat to the public health allover world. Out of the total
tuberculosis cases reported globally, more than half are reported from African continent and India. Two to three fold rises in
tuberculosis cases has been reported in the last two decades. Early diagnosis and treatment is one of the effective tools to control the rapid spread of disease. The aim of this study was to find out the value of
auramine phenol (AP) staining technique in diagnosis of the suspected
tuberculosis cases. A total of 2000 samples which included sputum (746), gastric aspirates (380), urine (336), endometrial biopsy (150), pleural fulids (146), Synovial fluids (67), ascitic fluids (35), cerebrospinal fluids (43), bone marrow (18), lymph node biopsy (11), pericardial aspirates (6), skin biopsy (4), peritoneal fluids (2), and stool (1) were included in the study. Sample were subjected for decontamination procedure by using standard Petroffs method. The deposit smears were stained by
auramine phenol (AP
stain) and Ziehl-Neelsenstaining (ZN
stain) and specimens were cultured for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Of the total positive isolates 69.23% were having
pulmonary tuberculosis and 30.76 had
extrapulmonary tuberculosis Genitourinary
tuberculosis was the most common diagnosis among the
extrapulmonary tuberculosis followed by chronic
synovitis,
bursitis,
meningitis,
septic arthritis and
pericardial effusion. Out of 130 positive samples 70 by culture, 66 smears were positive by
auramine phenol stain and 62 were positive by ZN
stain. A total of 27 samples were tested positive only by AP staining technique, which included (12) pulmonary and (15) extrpulmonary samples. The endometrial biopsy and pericardial fluid samples showed positive for
acid fast bacilli by AP
stain only, whereas ZN
stain and culture technique failed to demonstrate any bacilli in the same sample.
Auramine stain showed high sensitivity (47.14%) and specificity (96.58%). Result of the present study showed that the
auramine stain is a better method for screening samples from the suspected cases of
tuberculosis sample especially pulmonary and extrapulmonary cases where bacilli count is usually low.