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. 2008 May;88(3):244-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.tube.2007.11.009. Epub 2008 Feb 21.

Relationship between whole-blood interferon-gamma responses and the risk of active tuberculosis

Kazue Higuchi  1 , Nobuyuki Harada, Keiji Fukazawa, Toru Mori
Affiliations

Relationship between whole-blood interferon-gamma responses and the risk of active tuberculosis

Kazue Higuchi et al. Tuberculosis (Edinb). 2008 May.

Abstract

We have analyzed the relationship between the responses to the diagnostic method for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection, QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-G), and the risk of developing active tuberculosis (TB). Contacts under 42 years old who were exposed to a patient with infectious pulmonary TB were tested using QFT-G during an investigation. Among 172 contacts, 111 (64.5%) were QFT-G positive. All subjects were evaluated for active TB by chest X-ray examination and, if needed, by CT scan at the time of the QFT-G test and 39 were diagnosed with active TB based on radiological abnormalities consistent with TB. Of these, 35 (89.7%) were QFT-G positive. Statistically the geometric mean of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) production levels of the active TB group was significantly larger than that of the latent TB infection group (p=0.013). The results of the multivariate analysis clearly showed that a combined parameter of ESAT-6 and CFP-10 significantly contributes to disease risk for the infected subjects. Our results suggest that subjects with high levels of IFN-gamma production in response to either ESAT-6 and/or CFP-10 in the QFT-G test have a higher possibility of developing active TB than QFT-G positive subjects with lower levels of IFN-gamma.

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