[Amplification of 2 different gene segments of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its usefulness in the diagnosis of tuberculosis].

The infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis is highly prevalent in our country and is considered an emergent pathology in developed countries. The amplification of specific gene segments with diagnostics purposes is an alternative to identify fastidious and slow growing infective agents, being Mycobacterium tuberculosis one of them. Two polymerase chain reactions (PCR) directed to the amplification of a 294bp gene segment encoding a portion of a 65KD heat shock protein and 317 bp gene segment of a repetitive DNA segment (IS 6110) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, have a sensibility of 80 to 91.3% and a specificity of 83.9 to 100% when used in the identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 2 group of clinical samples, both compared to Koch's culture and or Ziehl-Neelsen stain. The diagnostic procedure is particularly useful in diagnosis of tuberculosis of extrapulmonary origin.