Comment Our patient showed a remarkable initial response to high dose intravenous gammaglobulin. The effect on his arthritis was transient, but most of the systemic symptoms were appreciably reduced or absent during the first six months of treatment. A relapse occurred four months after gammaglobulin was stopped, but renewed administration induced the same beneficial effects as before. The mech...

BACKGROUND The results of sputum culture for Mycobacterium tuberculosis must be awaited in most cases, which delays the start of treatment in patients with sputum smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis. We investigated whether plasma chitotriosidase activity is a strong marker for early diagnosis of tuberculosis in patients for whom a bacillus smear is negative and tuberculosis culture is positi...

BACKGROUND While smear positive patients with tuberculosis (TB) are considered more infectious than smear negative patients, the latter can also transmit TB. METHODS In a molecular epidemiology study of 791 patients in the Greater Vancouver regional district, the number of episodes of TB transmission from two groups of smear negative clustered patients by RFLP (assumed to be involved in recen...

Background: While smear positive patients with tuberculosis (TB) are considered more infectious than smear negative patients, the latter can also transmit TB. Methods: In a molecular epidemiology study of 791 patients in the Greater Vancouver regional district, the number of episodes of TB transmission from two groups of smear negative clustered patients by RFLP (assumed to be involved in recen...

SETTING Adult patients with tuberculosis (TB) recruited at the chest clinic of the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, from 2003 to 2004. OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with delayed treatment or hospitalisation. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey of newly identified adult patients with TB. RESULTS A total of 223 patients were included in the analysis. Patients with smea...

BACKGROUND Even though commercial nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) have become the most frequently used molecular tests for laboratory diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), published studies report variable estimates of their diagnostic accuracy. We analysed the accuracy of commercial NAATs for the diagnosis of pulmonary TB in smear positive and smear negative respiratory samples us...

BACKGROUND The 2007 World Health Organization (WHO) guideline to diagnose smear-negative tuberculosis (TB) in HIV-prevalent settings was mainly based on expert advice and therefore requires evaluation in real life situations. METHODS In 2009, this guideline was introduced at the ALERT hospital in Ethiopia. From October 2009 to January 2011, the accuracy of the guideline was evaluated using My...