Interferon-gamma assay and tuberculin skin test for screening of latent tuberculosis in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a summarization study

Abstract

Background Latent tuberculosis is an important clinical problem. This problem might be significant in some specific groups of patients. The screening for latent tuberculosis is recommended for management of those patients at risk. An important group to be screened is patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Materials and methods This work is a retrospective study. The summarization on the available data from published articles on the comparative study between interferon-gamma assay and tuberculin skin test for screening for latent tuberculosis in inflammatory bowel disease patients was done. The pooled detection rate was calculated for using interferon-gamma assay and tuberculin skin test in screening for latent tuberculosis in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Results The pooled detection rates for using tuberculin skin test and interferon-gamma assay in screening for latent tuberculosis in patients with inflammatory bowel disease are equal to 11.67% (95% confidence interval=10.33–13.19%) and 14.64% (95% confidence interval=13.16–16.30%), respectively. Conclusion It can be shown that interferon-gamma assay has a better efficacy in detection of latent tuberculosis among the patients with inflammatory bowel disease.