Urinary lipoarabinomannan (LAM) in the diagnosis of tuberculosis

Volume : VII, Issue : VII, July - 2018

Kabi Raj Pandey, Badade Zg, Vijay K Shah, Mukunda Raj Kalouni

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It generally affects the lungs and other parts of the body. A

diagnosis of TB is made by identifying M. TB in clinical samples (e.g., sputum, blood, pus, a tissue biopsy). However, the gold standard culture

process for this slow growing organism can take 2–6 weeks for result. The detection of lipoarabinomannan (LAM), a 17.5–kDa glycolipid

component of the mycobacterial cell wall, can be better approach to diagnose active TB. LAM is released from metabolically active & degrading

mycobacterial cell wall and is detectable in urine. Detection of mycobacterial antigens in urine has several potential advantages compared with all

currently used diagnostic method. The main aim of present study is to diagnose TB by detecting urinary LAM.

In this study we have taken microbiologically confirmed TB patients and healthy individual as control. 5 ml random urine sample was collected

from Pulmonary TB patients, Extrapulmonary TB patient and normal healthy individual in sterile containers and quantitative estimation was done

by ELISA. Urinary LAM of pulmonary TB (322.24 � 195.73) pg/ml is high as compare to the Extrapulmonary TB (245.95 � 217.92) pg/ml. LAM

value of Pulmonary TB and Extarpulmonary TB as compared with healthy individual (control) (41.06 � 9.77) shows statistically highly significant

(p<0.0001). Urinary LAM can be used as a marker for the diagnosis of tuberculosis.