Objective: To compare the efficacy of the conventional skin test and a novel flow cytometric whole blood assay in the diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in patients with rheumatologic diseases evaluated for treatment with tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α-blocking agents. Methods: Prospective study of 97 consecutively enrolled patients, who were assessed for the presence of LTBI thr...

QuantiFERON®-TB Gold in-tube (QFT-GIT) supernatants may be important samples for use in assessment of anti-tuberculosis (TB) antibodies when only limited volumes of blood can be collected and when a combination of antibody and cytokine measurements are required. These analytes, when used together, may also have the potential to differentiate active pulmonary TB (APTB) from latent TB infection (...

BACKGROUND Despite the enormous global burden of tuberculosis (TB), conventional approaches to diagnosis continue to rely on tests that have major drawbacks. The improvement of TB diagnostics relies, not only on good biomarkers, but also upon accurate detection methodologies. The 10-kDa culture filtrate protein (CFP-10) and the 6-kDa early secreted antigen target (ESAT-6) are potent T-cell anti...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of a pulmonary epidemic that is estimated to infect one-third of the world's population and that has an increased incidence of multidrug resistance. The evaluation of new chemical entities against M. tuberculosis is hampered by the lack of biological tools to help predict efficacy, from early drug development to clinical trials. As the rat is th...

Nontuberculous mycobacteria are often underdiagnosed due to lack of proper diagnostic facilities. To overcome this, we created a rapid PCR method for the species-specific diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its differentiation from other mycobacteria. A set of PCR primers targeting the gene encoding for early-secreted antigen-6 (ESAT-6) of the M. tuberculosis complex was designed and st...

Immune escape of tumor cells is one of the main obstacles hindering the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy. We developed a novel strategy to block immune escape by transfecting tumor cells in vivo with genes of pathogenic antigens from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB). This induces presentation of the TB antigen on tumor cell surfaces, which can be recognized by antigen presenting cells (APCs...

The aim of this work was to study the difference in interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) production by T lymphocytes after early secretory antigen target 6 (ESAT-6) or purified protein derivate (PPD) stimulation in whole blood culture supernatants from children with suspected tuberculosis (TB) disease (n = 21), latent TB infection (n = 16) and negative controls (NC) (n = 22) from an endemic area in Bra...

It is well known that the majority of healthy individuals exposed to Mycobacterium tuberculosis do not become clinically ill. We have previously shown that in recently exposed healthy contacts of tuberculosis (TB) patients, a strong immune response to the M. tuberculosis 6-kDa early secreted antigenic target (ESAT-6) virulence factor correlated with a higher risk of subsequent disease, although...