TY  - JOUR
A1  - Meier, Johannes P.
A1  - Möbus, Selina
A1  - Heigl, Florian
A1  - Asbach-Nitzsche, Alexandra
A1  - Niller, Hans Helmut
A1  - Plentz, Annelie
A1  - Avsar, Korkut
A1  - Heiß-Neumann, Marion
A1  - Schaaf, Bernhard
A1  - Cassens, Uwe
A1  - Seese, Bernd
A1  - Teschner, Daniel
A1  - Handzhiev, Sabin
A1  - Graf, Uwe
A1  - Lübbert, Christoph
A1  - Steinmaurer, Monika
A1  - Kontogianni, Konstantina
A1  - Berg, Christoph
A1  - Maieron, Andreas
A1  - Blaas, Stefan H.
A1  - Wagner, Ralf
A1  - Deml, Ludwig
A1  - Barabas, Sascha
T1  - Performance of T-Track\(^®\) TB, a novel dual marker RT-qPCR-based whole-blood test for improved detection of active tuberculosis
JF  - Diagnostics
N2  - Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading causes of death by an infectious disease. It remains a major health burden worldwide, in part due to misdiagnosis. Therefore, improved diagnostic tests allowing the faster and more reliable diagnosis of patients with active TB are urgently needed. This prospective study examined the performance of the new molecular whole-blood test T-Track\(^®\) TB, which relies on the combined evaluation of IFNG and CXCL10 mRNA levels, and compared it to that of the QuantiFERON\(^®\)-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus) enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Diagnostic accuracy and agreement analyses were conducted on the whole blood of 181 active TB patients and 163 non-TB controls. T-Track\(^®\) TB presented sensitivity of 94.9% and specificity of 93.8% for the detection of active TB vs. non-TB controls. In comparison, the QFT-Plus ELISA showed sensitivity of 84.3%. The sensitivity of T-Track\(^®\) TB was significantly higher (p < 0.001) than that of QFT-Plus. The overall agreement of T-Track\(^®\) TB with QFT-Plus to diagnose active TB was 87.9%. Out of 21 samples with discordant results, 19 were correctly classified by T-Track\(^®\) TB while misclassified by QFT-Plus (T-Track\(^®\) TB-positive/QFT-Plus-negative), and two samples were misclassified by T-Track\(^®\) TB while correctly classified by QFT-Plus (T-Track\(^®\) TB-negative/QFT-Plus-positive). Our results demonstrate the excellent performance of the T-Track\(^®\) TB molecular assay and its suitability to accurately detect TB infection and discriminate active TB patients from non-infected controls.
KW  - tuberculosis
KW  - TB
KW  - active TB
KW  - infection detection
KW  - T-Track\(^®\) TB
KW  - QuantiFERON\(^®\)-TB Gold Plus
KW  - mRNA
KW  - RT-qPCR
KW  - CXCL10
KW  - IFNG
Y1  - 2023
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-304113
SN  - 2075-4418
VL  - 13
IS  - 4
ER  -