Genitourinary tuberculosis in a 54-year-old woman: Diagnostic difficulty

Abstract

Genitourinary tuberculosis (GUTB) is an extrapulmonary manifestation of tuberculosis seen in 1.2% of all cases of tuberculosis. The clinical case of a 54-year-old woman diagnosed with GUTB is presented. Cloudy urine, abdominal pain, and microscopic hematuria led us to investigate for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Although cultures were negative, positive Ehrlich-Ziehl-Neelsen (EZN) staining and a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) revealed the diagnosis of M. tuberculosis complex (MTC), which was confirmed by treatment success. It has been shown that PCR is a reliable and rapid method for establishing or supporting the diagnosis of tuberculosis and can be used in a routine diagnostic algorithm when conventional methods fail to identify MTC. © 2010 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.