Role of Quantiferon TB gold assays in monitoring the efficacy of antituberculosis therapy

Autor: E. El Kattan, S. Abdel latif, Nariman Helmy, Wafaa M. Ashour, M.M. Kamel
Jazyk: angličtina
Předmět:
Zdroj: Egyptian Journal of Chest Disease and Tuberculosis, Vol 61, Iss 4, Pp 329-336 (2012)
ISSN: 0422-7638
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejcdt.2012.09.011
Popis: Rationale The impact of antituberculous treatment on (IFN)- γ response to mycobacterial tuberculosis antigens have been widely investigated but the results have been controversial. Aim of work To evaluate the role of Quantiferon TB gold assays as one of the interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) for monitoring the efficacy of antituberculosis therapy in patients with active disease. Subjects and methods Thirty patients with active pulmonary TB were enrolled in this cross-sectional study where they were subjected to history taking, clinical examination, chest X-ray, direct smear examination of sputum samples for AFB using Ziehl–Neelson stain performed on three visits; up on enrollment, 2 and 6 months later. Lowenstein Jensen medium cultures of sputum samples were done for isolation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis on first visit. All patients in the study group were subjected to QuantiFERON-TB Gold estimation on the three visits. Results The mean sensitivity and specificity of QFT-G test was 85.9% and 62.6% respectively. Using χ 2 analysis, there was a statistically significant association between QFT-G results and culture results upon enrollment and Acid fast bacilli positivity on second and third visits. Studying the changes in QFT-G results throughout the whole study period revealed a statistically significant decrease in number of QFT-G positive cases from 24/29 patients (82.8%) at first visit to 4/25 patients (16%) at the third visit. All 21/25 patients (84%) who became QFT-G negative at the end of the study had a complete clinical and microbiological recovery of the TB disease. Conclusion The analysis of QFT-G assay results showed that in the majority of our TB patients there was a correlation between clinical treatment outcome and changes of IFN- γ response to M. tuberculosis -specific antigens.
Databáze: OpenAIRE