ABSTRACT
The Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC), especially M. avium, is an important opportunistic pathogen of AIDS patients in the United States. In Puerto Rico, the incidence of infections caused by MAC has not been determined. This is due, in part, to the difficulties associated to the microbiological identification of the microorganisms. In this work, a commercially available kit (AccuProbe, Gen-Probe, Inc., San Diego, CA) utilizing a DNA probe complementary to rRNA of M. avium and M. intracellulare was used to identify seventeen MAC strains and one unknown atypical mycobacterium recovered in culture in Puerto Rico from clinical samples. The results obtained revealed that M. avium was the predominant species recovered (83 per cent of isolates tested). Only two cultures were identified as M. intracellulare. The unknown culture, which did not react with either probe, turned out to be M. gordonae. The probe tests not only are simple to perform, but provide cultural identification results in as little as two hours. This study, the first one of its kind in Puerto Rico, demonstrates that the nucleic acid probes for the cultural identification of M. avium and M. intracellulare offer the potential of providing a prompt diagnosis and much needed data on the epidemiology of MAC infections in Puerto Rico