JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC RESEARCH FOR MULTIDISCIPLINARY Impact Factor 1.393, ISSN: 2320-5083, Volume 2, Issue 3, April 2014 584 www.jiarm.com PRELIMINARY MICROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCULOSIS CORDING PATTERNS PROF. AMITA JAIN* POOJA SINGH** PRATIMA DIXIT*** PRATIBHA SHARMA*** ****Dept. of Microbiology, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, U.P., India ABSTRACT Microscopic observation drug susceptibility (MODS) assay has described as a method for rapid diagnosis and detection of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that relies on its characteristic growth in a liquid medium. Cording microscopic patterns in liquid culture are not detailed in earlier studies. Here, we are describing different cording pattern of M. tuberculosis as seen in liquid culture (MODS). Drug resistance to isoniazid and rifampicin is also described by MODS. Acid fast bacilli (AFB) positive sputum samples from 150 patients were inoculated for detection of isoniazid and rifampicin resistance by MODS. Cording patterns seen in culture plates with smear grading are described. Of the total 150 AFB positive samples; 138(92%) showed cording, 8(5.3%) were negative for cords, and 4(2.7%) got contaminated. Small loose clumps of varying length were seen by 5th day of incubation which was difficult to interpret. On further incubation for a couple of days, different types of cording patterns were recorded under inverted microscope. Therefore, knowing the cording morphology will help in interpretation of results. KEY WORDS: Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, Microscopic Observation Drug Susceptibility, Cording Pattern INTRODUCTION Early detection of drug resistant TB plays a pivotal role in effective control. Culture and drug susceptibility testing (DST) using conventional methods are time consuming while automated methods are expensive, limiting their use in resource constrained settings (1,2). Hence, there is need for a rapid, reliable and cost effective test for diagnosis and detection of drug resistance. The microscopic observation drug susceptibility (MODS) assay is a relatively low-cost, simple liquid culture method that relies on the microscopic detection of cording growth that is characteristic of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) (3-7). MODS detects TB and drug resistance directly from sputum using liquid broth media, and has been found to be highly sensitive and specific in rapidly detecting TB and multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) compared with conventional methods.