Clinical evaluation of Gen-Probe's amplified mycobacterium tuberculosis direct test for rapid diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Egyptian children at risk for infection.

Context: Diagnostic detection of tuberculosis (TB) has improved considerably. Available, standardized, nucleic acid-based amplification techniques have been shown to yield reliable results within 4 to 7 hours of sample processing.

Objective: To study the diagnostic performance of Gen-Probe's technique for direct detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in comparison with BACTEC 460 TB culture for both positive and negative Ziehl-Neelsen smears in Egyptian children at risk for TB infection.

Parvovirus B19 infection in children with a variety of hematological disorders.

This study was carried out to detect Parvovirus B19 (PB19) DNA together with its antibodies in the sera of children with a range of hematological disorders to clarify the contribution of this infection to changes observed in hematological picture in those populations. This study included 85 pediatric patients with different hematological disorders. Twenty healthy subjects with matched age and sex were included as controls.