Molecular determination of Rifampicin resistance in clinical samples of patients with buruli ulcer disease: A comparison of two assays.

This study evaluates a novel assay to detect rifampicin resistance in clinical Mycobacterium ulcerans isolates. Although highly susceptible for PCR inhibitors in 50% of samples tested, the assay was 100% M. ulcerans-specific and yielded >98% analyzable sequences with a lower limit of detection of 100-200 copies of the target sequence.