BACKGROUND A project was implemented in 2010 to improve TB notification and TB screening and diagnostic routines in large general hospitals. The aims of present study was to assess baseline TB screening and diagnostic practices in the three largest general hospitals in Vietnam. OBJECTIVES To assess baseline TB screening and diagnostic practices in the three largest general hospitals in Vietna...

BACKGROUND Reliable identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection or tuberculosis (TB) disease in young children is vital to assure adequate preventive and curative treatment. The tuberculin skin test (TST) and IFNγ-release assays may supplement the diagnosis of pediatric TB as cases are typically bacteriologically unconfirmed. However, it is unclear to what extent the performance of T...

Background.  The Xpert Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)/rifampicin (RIF) is a fully automated diagnostic test that allows for the detection of MTB including its RIF resistance. Although the test is used for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) in sputum samples worldwide, studies using fecal specimens are scarce. We therefore evaluated the efficacy of the Xpert MTB/RIF test for detection of MTB i...

Background: Smear is insensitive and culture is slow, but both methods are essential in tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics. The nucleic acid amplification (NAA) assay is sensitive and rapid, but its role as an additive test in the diagnosis of TB has remained undefined. Aims: The objective was to estimate the specimenand patient-based performance of the NAA assay in detecting Mycobacterium tuberculo...

this study was planned to determine hiv seroprevalence among pulmonary tuberculosis patients, to characterize the isolated mycobacteria into typical and atypical strains and to evaluate the drug resistant pattern of mycobacterial isolates. the study aims to correlate multidrug resistance (mdr) and hiv seropositivity status in pulmonary tuberculosis patients. during the year 1994-1997, 750 pulmo...

Purpose: The drug resistance pattern in tuberculosis (TB) is still under investigated. We analyzed the clinical data from the patients with smear positive TB and applied the model to predict the patients with smear-positive TB. Materials and Methods: Medical records information of 6977 cases was included from 11,950 inpatients from January 2009 to November 2013. The cases data were divided into...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been proposed as a candidate agent for the cause of sarcoidosis. The QuantiFERON-TB Gold test has a higher specificity for detecting M. tuberculosis infection than the conventional tuberculin skin test. This study aimed to investigate the rate of positive QuantiFERON-TB Gold results in Japanese sarcoidosis patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS ...

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...

BACKGROUND Improved diagnostics for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) are urgently needed. However, test developers and investors require market size data to support new product development. This study assessed the served available market for TB diagnostics in Brazil in 2012 and the market segmentation in the public and private sectors. METHODS Data were collected on test volumes done in the...

OBJECTIVE Our aim was to describe the patient characteristics, clinical-epidemiological profile, and treatment outcome of childhood tuberculosis (TB). METHODS A retrospective, descriptive study was undertaken of 1212 children aged 0 to 18 years admitted to Beijing Children's Hospital for the treatment of TB from January 2002 to December 2010. Statistical significance of category variables was...