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Evaluation of a commercial immunodiagnostic kit incorporating lipoarabinomannan in the serodiagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in Ghana
Author(s) -
Lawn S. D.,
Frimpong E. H.,
Nyarko E.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
tropical medicine and international health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.056
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1365-3156
pISSN - 1360-2276
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-3156.1997.d01-151.x
Subject(s) - lipoarabinomannan , medicine , tuberculosis , immunology , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , pulmonary tuberculosis , mycobacterium tuberculosis , gastroenterology , virology , pathology
Summary We evaluated ‘Mycodot’, a commercially maiketed immunodiagnostic test for tuberculosis which detects antibodies to lipoarabinomannan antigen. Serum was tested from 52 pitients with newly diagnosed smear‐positive pulmonary tuberculosis, of whom 20 were HIV‐positive and 32 HIV‐negative. Control sera were taken from 40 patients of whom 20 had acute non‐tuberculous lobar pneumonia and 20 patients had no respiratory disease. The test was found to have a very high specificity of 97.5% (95%Cl:92.5–100%). However, the sensitivity in HIV‐negative patients was 56% (95%Cl:39–73%), and was substantially lower at 25% (95%Cl:6–44%) in HIV‐positive patients. In conclusion: ‘Mycodot’ was found to be a highly specific and easily performed assay. However, the poor sensitivity, especially in HIV‐infected patients, renders it unlikely to be useful either as a primary or adjunctive diagnostic test for tuberculosis, particularly in countries with a high prevalence of HIV. A larger trial of this assay in Ghana was not deemed necessary.