BACKGROUND Health care workers (HCW) have historically borne a heavy burden of tuberculosis (TB) infection and disease. Unfortunately, physicians are rarely included in HCW surveys of tuberculin exposure and infection. METHODS The prevalence and risk factors for tuberculin reactivity were determined for a sample of the 1732 licensed physicians in Edmonton. Stratified random sampling was used ...

International travel may be a source of introduction of tuberculosis into low-incidence countries. We assessed whether, in The Netherlands, sensitivity to tuberculin was associated with a history of travel to countries with a high incidence of tuberculosis. Immunocompetent adults with no history of Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccination or sensitivity to tuberculin were skin-tested simultaneously ...

http://www.journal-imab-bg.org / J of IMAB. 2015, vol. 21, issue 2/ ABSTRACT This study has been designed to evaluate safety and efficacy of BCG vaccine in school-entering children in terms of tuberculin response to PPD and scar formation as indicators for successful vaccination. 12 BCG lots were used to immunize 1054 tuberculin-negative children at age of 7 years. Local lesions were observed a...

Regulatory T cells, which stimulate or inhibit the effector functions of distinct T cell subsets, are critical in the control of the immune response. We investigated the effect of TGF-beta and IL-10 on T cell subsets according to the Th1/Th2 immune status. Sixty-two patients with asthma and 38 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis were included. Allergy skin tests, tuberculin tests, and chest ra...

A sensitive two-step simultaneous enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for human gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) has been developed and used as an in vitro test for human tuberculosis (TB) in comparison with tuberculin skin testing. The EIA was shown to be highly sensitive, detecting less than 0.5 IU of recombinant human IFN-gamma per ml within a linear detection range of 0.5 to 150 IU/ml. The assay was highl...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the leading causes of death among infectious diseases worldwide. Despite its low incidence rates in countries of Western Europe and North America, the resurgence of TB in Eastern Europe and the increased immigration from high-incidence countries imply that extreme vigilance is required in order to detect early, treat, and isolate all new cases. In thi...

The heptapeptide Asn-Gly-Ser-Gln-Met-Arg-Leu, part of a tuberculin-active intracellular mycobacterial protein and described in the literature as having residual tuberculin activity, has been synthesized. Biological assays of the synthetic peptide showed it to be recognized as an antigen of mycobacterial origin by its ability to elicit an early allergic reaction in Mycobacterium bovis BCG-infect...

In a search for the source of the circulating endogenous pyrogen (EP) that mediates tuberculin-induced fever, tuberculin was incubated in vitro with various tissues of rabbits sensitized by intravenous infection with BCG. Evidence was obtained that tuberculin specifically stimulates cells in the blood of sensitized rabbits to generate pyrogen in vitro, whereas both lymph node and spleen cells f...

Infectivity of Sputum smear positive patients with tuberculosis for household contacts was assessed before diagnosis and during domiciliary treatment. Intracutaneous tuberculin test, sputum and radiological examinations were done in all cases and their house-hold contacts initially; and were repeated for contacts every six months during two years follow-up. Initially 244 (56%) contacts gave pos...

Background: In Hong Kong there has been nearly universal neonatal BCG vaccination coverage since 1980. Method: 21 113 schoolchildren aged 6–9 years were skin tested with one unit of tuberculin (PPD RT-23) using the intradermal technique during a routine BCG revaccination programme. Information on sex, date of birth, date of tuberculin testing, and tuberculin reaction size at 72 hours was retrie...