Abstract
A quick blood test that can accurately detect tuberculosis infection before symptoms appear has been developed by a British team. The test could be used to screen people during a disease outbreak, allowing drugs to be given to infected individuals as early as possible, says researcher Ajit Lalvani of Oxford University. This would improve the containment of an outbreak. The conventional TB test dates back 100 years and involves injecting a mixture of>200 proteins. However, these proteins are present in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the anti-TB BCG vaccine as well as other bacteria. This means the test often gives false-positive results for people who have had the BCG vaccination. Lalvani's test looks for immune system T cells responding to ESAT-6, a protein present in M. tuberculosis, but absent from the BCG vaccine. CK http://www.newscientist.com/news
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