Detecting and treating active and latent tuberculosis are pivotal elements for effective infection control; yet, due to their significant inherent limitations, the diagnostic means for these two stages of tuberculosis (TB) to date remain suboptimal. This paper reviews the current diagnostic tools for mycobacterial infection and focuses on the application of flow cytometry as a promising method ...

OBJECTIVES We sought to determine the efficacy of coaching Latino adolescents with latent tuberculosis infection to adhere to isoniazid treatment. METHODS Participants (n = 286) were randomly assigned to adherence coaching, attention control, or usual care groups. Adherence was measured via interviews and validated with urine assays. RESULTS Coaching resulted in significant increases in adh...

Cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis grown under oxygen depletion conditions enter into a state of nonreplicating persistence that may reflect a physiologically latent state. When these cultures were harvested and injected intranasally into mice, no bacteria could be recovered from the lungs for about 3 weeks, but after that evidence of regrowth was observed. Preimmunization of mice with a pa...

• Objective: To review the diagnosis and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI). • Methods: Qualititative assessment of the literature. • Results: One third of the world’s population is latently infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. From this pool, approximately 9 million active tuberculosis (TB) cases emerge annually, resulting in 2 to 3 million deaths and making TB the most com...

To the Editor: In their review article, Getahun et al. (May 28 issue)1 provide a useful overview of issues surrounding latent tuberculosis infection. However, newly published data regarding the performance of the T-SPOT.TB assay call into question the supposition that false conversions and reversions are more common with interferon-γ release assays (IGRAs) than with tuberculin skin tests.2 Spec...

Tuberculosis is recognized as the world's leading bacterial cause of death. Yet 95% of infection is believed to exist in an asymptomatic 'latent' form that is defined not by the identification of bacteria, but by the host immune response in the form of reactivity to tuberculosis proteins in the tuberculin skin test. It seems likely that clinically defined latent tuberculosis actually represents...