MONDAY, Sept. 18 (HealthDay News) -- A set of four biomarkers can diagnose tuberculosis infection with an accuracy of about 80 percent, according to the results of a study published in the Sept. 16 issue of The Lancet.
Sanjeev Krishna, F.Med.Sci., from St. George's Hospital Medical School in London, U.K., and colleagues examined proteomic profiles in the serum of 102 patients with tuberculosis and 91 controls using SELDI-ToF mass spectrometry. An additional 77 tuberculosis patients and 79 controls were used to validate the markers. Control patients had a range of inflammatory conditions whose clinical features can mimic tuberculosis. Subjects were from the United Kingdom, Uganda, Angola and The Gambia.
The researchers identified four biomarkers (serum amyloid A protein, transthyretin, neopterin, and C reactive protein) that in various combinations gave a diagnostic accuracy of up to 84 percent. These biomarkers gave a diagnostic accuracy up to 78 percent when tested on the independent set of patients.
"Further evidence of the absolute specificity of these tuberculosis markers, and generation of mass-spectral serum patterns from patients in the early stages of disease, could eventually have a huge effect on the clinical outcomes of tuberculosis infection worldwide by reducing the time between infection, diagnosis, and onset of therapy," Stuart J. Cordwell, Ph.D., from the University of Sydney in Australia, and colleagues write in an accompanying editorial.
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