Extremes of age are associated with indeterminate QuantiFERON-TB gold assay results.

Use in routine clinical practice of two commercial blood tests for diagnosis of infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis: a prospective study.

BACKGROUND Two commercial blood assays for the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection--T-SPOT.TB and QuantiFERON-TB Gold--have been separately compared with the tuberculin skin test. Our aim was to compare the efficacy of all three tests in the same population sample. METHODS We did a prospective study in 393 consecutively enrolled patients who were tested simultaneously with T-SPOT.TB an...

Factors Associated with the Performance of a Blood-Based Interferon-γ Release Assay in Diagnosing Tuberculosis

BACKGROUND Indeterminate results are a recognised limitation of interferon-γ release assays (IGRA) in the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI) and TB disease, especially in children. We investigated whether age and common co-morbidities were associated with IGRA performance in an unselected cohort of resettled refugees. METHODS A retrospective cross-sectional study of refuge...

Negative effect of smoking on the performance of the QuantiFERON TB gold in tube test

BACKGROUND False negative and indeterminate Interferon Gamma Release Assay (IGRA) results are a well documented problem. Cigarette smoking is known to increase the risk of tuberculosis (TB) and to impair Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) responses to antigenic challenge, but the impact of smoking on IGRA performance is not known. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of smoking on IGRA perfor...

QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube Performance for Diagnosing Active Tuberculosis in Children and Adults in a High Burden Setting

AIM To determine whether QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT) can contribute to the diagnosis of active tuberculosis (TB) in children in a high-burden setting and to assess the performance of QFT and tuberculin skin test (TST) in a prospective cohort of TB suspect children compared to adults with confirmed TB in Tanzania. METHODS Sensitivity and specificity of QFT and TST for diagnosing active ...

Evaluation of the High Indeterminate Rate of the QuantiFERON®-Tb Gold In-Tube Assay in a Children’s Hospital