BACKGROUND The existing World Health Organization diagnostic algorithms for smear-negative TB perform poorly in HIV-infected individuals. New TB diagnostics such as urine TB lipoarabinomannan (LAM) could improve the accuracy and reduce delays in TB diagnosis in HIV-infected smear-negative presumptive TB. We sought to determine predictors for MTB culture-positivity among these patients. METHOD...

No tool exists to identify potential under-diagnosis of smear-negative and extrapulmonary TB. In an ecological study, we used a simple tool plotting percentages of smear-positive pulmonary TB amongst newly diagnosed TB in African region countries and provinces in Mozambique against the country’s and provinces’ HIV prevalence. We visually inspected the plots to determine potential under-diagnosi...

Background and Purpose: Several evidences have shown some synergistic effect of diabetes co-morbidity on the tuberculosis (TB) treatment results, while some other studies have not found such associations. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between TB-diabetes co-morbidity and outcomes of TB treatment. Materials and Methods: The research population in this case control study were ...

27 Diagnosis of Post Kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL), particularly the macular form is 28 difficult by microscopy. This study compared the positivity of nested polymerase chain reaction 29 (91.9%) with imprint smear microscopy (70.9%) in 62 PKDL samples. Nested PCR, showing 87.5% 30 positivity in macular lesions compared to 41.6% by imprint smear microscopy, is an efficient method 31 for ...

Diagnosis of post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL), particularly the macular form, is difficult when based on microscopy. This study compared the results of nested PCR (91.9% positive samples) with imprint smear microscopy (70.9% positive samples) for 62 PKDL samples. We found that nested PCR, which indicated 87.5% positivity for the macular lesions, compared to 41.6% positivity by imprint...

Sputum smear microscopy is widely used for tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment monitoring. We evaluated the correlation between smear microscopy and time to liquid culture positivity during early tuberculosis treatment. The study included patients with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis hospitalized at a tuberculosis reference centre in Germany between 01/2012 and 05/2013. Patient records w...

INTRODUCTION To understand better the risk of tuberculosis transmission with increasing delay in tuberculosis treatment, we undertook a retrospective cohort study in Shenzhen, China. METHODS All pulmonary tuberculosis cases in the Shenzhen tuberculosis surveillance database from 1993-2010 were included. Sputum smear positivity and presence of pulmonary cavity were used as proxies for risk of ...

BACKGROUND Diagnostic options for pulmonary tuberculosis in resource-poor settings are commonly limited to smear microscopy. We investigated whether bleach concentration by sedimentation and sputum cytology analysis (SCA) increased the positivity rate of smear microscopy for smear-positive tuberculosis. METHODS We did a prospective diagnostic study in a Médecins Sans Frontières-supported hosp...