Strong increase of true and false positive mycobacterial cultures sent to the National Reference Centre in Belgium, 2007 to 2016.
Health and disease monitoring
Peer reviewed scientific article
English
SCIENSANO
Authors
Karine Soetaert [1]; Lorenzo Subissi [2]; Pieter-Jan Ceyssens [3]; Vanfleteren, Brigitte [4]; Marianne Chantrenne [5]; Tommi Asikainen [6]; Els Duysburgh [7]; Vanessa Mathys [8]Keywords
Abstract:
IntroductionIn 2007, a new federal legislation in Belgium prohibited non-biosafety level 3 laboratories to process culture tubes suspected of containing mycobacteria.AimTo present mycobacterial surveillance/diagnosis data from the Belgian National Reference Centre for mycobacteria (NRC) from 2007 to 2016.MethodsThis retrospective observational study investigated the numbers of analyses at the NRC and false positive cultures (interpreted as containing mycobacteria at referring clinical laboratories, but with no mycobacterial DNA detected by PCR in the NRC). We reviewed mycobacterial species …