A new molecular-based method can detect mycobacterial pathogens which cause tuberculosis much more quickly than the culture-bases techniques that used to take several weeks a study says. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis -- a potentially serious infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs -- and was responsible for the death of nearly 1.5 million people worldwide in 2014. The team studied more than 6800 patient samples to examine molecular-based methods for the detection of mycobacterial pathogens. The researchers developed a diagnostic algorithm to detect mycobacteria directly from the patient sample using genetic analysis. As many mycobacteria
