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- Title
Invited Commentary: The Winding Road to Identifying the Annual Rate of Tuberculosis Infection.
- Authors
Horsburgh, C Robert
- Abstract
Many persons with immunological tests indicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, such as tuberculin skin tests or interferon-γ release assays, are at risk of progression to tuberculosis disease. Persons whose tests revert to negative may no longer be at such risk. Therefore, identifying the rate of test reversion, potentially indicating cure of M. tuberculosis infection, is an important area of investigation. In their accompanying article (Am J Epidemiol. 2023;192(12):1937–1943), Schwalb et al. extract data on test reversion from prechemotherapy literature and construct a model to predict the rate of reversion, and thus the likely cure of infection. Unfortunately, the incompleteness of the historical data and the use of imprecise definitions of test positivity and reversion lead to substantial misclassification and limit the usefulness of the model. Better definitions and improved tests will be needed in order to develop a clear picture of this aspect of the natural history of tuberculosis.
- Subjects
MYCOBACTERIAL disease diagnosis; TUBERCULOSIS epidemiology; TUBERCULOSIS diagnosis; TUBERCULOSIS risk factors; DISEASE progression; INTERFERON gamma release tests; CANCER chemotherapy; RISK assessment; MYCOBACTERIUM tuberculosis; TUBERCULIN test; MYCOBACTERIAL diseases
- Publication
American Journal of Epidemiology, 2023, Vol 192, Issue 12, p1944
- ISSN
0002-9262
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/aje/kwad125