Additional benefits of GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay for the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis patients with prior exposure to fluoroquinolones

Additional benefits of GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay for the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis patients with prior exposure to fluoroquinolones Peijun Tang,1,* Ping Xu,1,* Wei Shu,2 Xiafang Wang,1 Jian Guo,1 Huafeng Song,1 Sumei Li,1 Yu Pang,2 Meiying Wu1 1Department of Tuberculosis, The Fifth People’s Hospital of Suzhou, Suzhou, China; 2National Clinical Laboratory on Tuberculosis, Beijing Chest Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Tuberculosis and Thoracic Tumor Institute, Beijing, China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: We performed a prospective study to investigate the association between pre-diagnosis exposure to fluoroquinolone (FQ) and laboratory testing results among tuberculosis (TB) patients. Patients and methods: Each TB-suspected patient provided sputum specimen for mycobacteria growth indicator tube (MGIT) culture and GeneXpert among pulmonary TB patients. Confirmed TB patients and clinically diagnosed TB patients were further enrolled in the final analysis. Results: A total of 661 TB patients were included in the final analysis. The distribution of rural TB patients in the FQ-exposed group was significantly higher than that of urban TB patients (P