Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Introduction Tuberculosis or TB (tubercle bacillus), which is also known as phthisis, phthisis pulmonalis, or consumption; is a widespread and highly infectious disease that is usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is a pathogenic bacteria belonging to the mycobacterium genus. 1 Tuberculosis typically attacks the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body. Tuberculosis is considered to be highly infectious in nature. Most infections do not show any symptoms (asymptomatic) and are hence known as cases of latent tuberculosis. From statistical analysis it has been determined that, about one in ten latent infections eventually progresses to the active disease state, which if left untreated, kills more than 50% of those infected. Considering the threat TB poses, the diagnosis of TB is usually performed by performing chest X-rays of infected patients and microscopy analysis of blood/sputum samples. Although a chest X-ray showing cavitary lesions in the lung of infected patients is suggestive of the presence of TB, there are other lung infections that may exhibit similar X-ray profles. In this regard, the defnitive diagnosis of TB can be confrmed on the positive microscopic observation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) cells. 2 Mtb cells exhibit the typical rod-shaped morphology, characteristic to bacilli. In this procedure, clinical samples from suspect patients; such as sputum, pus or tissue biopsy samples are frst collected. The bacterial cells are isolated and cultured after which, they are suitably stained and usually observed under a fuorescence microscope. The positive microscopic identifcation of the rod-shaped Mtb cells from the clinical patient samples forms a defnite diagnosis of active TB is considered as the ‘Gold Standard’ among all the other currently available diagnostic protocols. Although, it is the ‘Gold Standard’ diagnostic technique for ascertaining the presence of TB infection, microscopy requires the culturing of TB cells as a prerequisite. This is a bottleneck limitation because, TB divides at an extremely slow rate of 16-20 hours per division, which is drastically slower compared to other bacteria that usually divide within an hour. Therefore, the culturing of Mtb cells before performing microscopy is an extremely long process that can take up to anywhere between 2-6 weeks, for samples collected from sputum or blood. Considering the dangerous progression of TB disease, delayed diagnosis can prove to be fatal. Furthermore, the entire process of culturing and performing fuorescence microscopy of Mtb cells is a highly time consuming and tedious process. Finally; both the X-ray scanning technique and the cell-culture/fuorescence microscopy based diagnostic methods are expensive, where the necessary sophisticated infrastructure may not be available in the resource limited settings (RLS) of certain under-developed and developing nations of the world where TB is prevalent. Pertaining to fuorescence microscopy, it is noteworthy that fuorescence is an isotropic phenomenon wherein the signal collection effciency is <1% in traditional optical confgurations. In addition, the fuorescence signal intensity arising from low sample concentrations would be very diffcult to discern and may also be also be associated with auto- fuorescence and background fuorescence which detrimentally lower the signal-to-noise ratios. Int J Biosen Bioelectron. 2016;1(1):18‒22 18 © 2016 Mulpur et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially. Surface plasmon coupled emission enabled silver-C 60 nano-biosensors for sensitive detection of tuberculosis Volume 1 Issue 1 - 2016 Pradyumna Mulpur, 1 Sairam Yadavilli, 1 Aditya Kurdekar, 1 Ramakrishna Podila, 2 Apparao M Rao, 2 Venkataramaniah Kamisetti 1 1 Laboratories for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Research, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, India 2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, USA Correspondence: Venkataramaniah Kamisetti, Laboratories for Nano science and Nanotechnology Research, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Prasanthinilayam, India, 515134, Email kvenkataramaniah@sssihl.edu.in Received: September 30, 2016 | Published: November 04, 2016 Abstract The current global scenario for diagnosing the fatal tuberculosis (TB) disease includes techniques like chest X-ray that show cavitary lesions indicating the presence of an active TB infection. This is often further substantiated with a confirmatory diagnosis involving the fluorescence microscopy aided positive identification of the causative organism; Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) in the blood or sputum of patients. However, expensive infrastructure in the form of X-ray and cell-culture/fluorescence microscopy facilities may not be present in resource limited settings (RLS) of the under-developed and developing nations where TB is highly prevalent. Furthermore; the standard microscopy based detection of TB bacteria involving fluorescence is limited by the isotropic nature of the fluorescence phenomenon itself, which is innately associated with poor signal collection efficiency and low signal-to-noise ratios. These limitations that hinder the early and positive identification of the TB disease condition may result in even the death of the patient. Therefore, in addressing this crucial need for developing efficient sensing strategies; we present the novel Surface Plasmon Coupled Emission (SPCE) sensing platform that enables the generation of highly amplified fluorescence signals with excellent signal collection efficiency, from low sample volumes; as a promising tool for enabling the highly sensitive and rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis. In this regard, we have employed Ag-C60 thin-film substrates, which we have previously reported as low-cost and highly sensitive fluorescence sensor platforms, along with the well-established acid-fast fluorescence staining protocol that offers specificity to detection of Mtb. This synergistic approach allowed us to perform the early, sensitive and specific diagnosis of TB in an economically viable manner. International Journal of Biosensors & Bioelectronics Research Article Open Access