Clonal Complexity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Can Hamper Diagnostic Procedures

Abstract

ABSTRACT Clonal complexity is increasingly accepted in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, including mixed infections by ≥2 strains, which usually occur in settings with a high burden of tuberculosis and/or a high risk of overexposure to infected patients. Mixed infections can hamper diagnostic procedures; obtaining an accurate antibiogram is difficult when the susceptibility patterns of the strains differ. Here, we show how mixed infections can also prove challenging for other diagnostic procedures, even outside settings where mixed infections are traditionally expected. We show how an unnoticed mixed infection in an HIV-positive patient diagnosed in Madrid, Spain, with differences in the representativeness of the coinfecting strains in different sputum samples, markedly complicated the resolution of a laboratory cross-contamination false positivity alert.