Letter to editor: comparative evaluation of four commercial serological antibody detection kits for the diagnosis of tuberculosis in China.

Rapid antibody detection has been used widely as a diagnostic aid in the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB), especially for bacterium-negative TB. We evaluated the diagnostic value of four commercial antibody detection kits with 501 sera from TB patients and controls. The sensitivities and specificities of the four kits were as follows: (1) Rapid test A 71.8% and 91.4% (85.5% for non-TB diseases and 92.8% for healthy controls); (2) Rapid test B 74.2% and 83.1% (63.9% for non-TB diseases and 92.8% for healthy controls); (3) Rapid test C 21.0% and 95.2% (for non-TB diseases); (4) Rapid test D 6.3% and 98.8% (for non-TB diseases). Overall the four commercial serological antibody detection kits performed very differently. Therefore, careful evaluation should be undertaken before any of these commercial serological assays can be recommended as a screening test for TB.