Association of Low Sputum Smear Positivity among Tuberculosis Patients with Interferon-Gamma Release Assay Outcomes of Close Contacts in Japan

Tsuyoshi Ogata, Natsuki Nagasu, Ritei Uehara and Kunihiko Ito
Additional contact information
Tsuyoshi Ogata: Tsuchiura Public Health Center of Ibaraki Prefectural Government, Tsuchiura 300-0812, Japan
Natsuki Nagasu: Mito Public Health Center of Ibaraki Prefectural Government, Mito 300-0852, Japan
Ritei Uehara: Department of Epidemiology for Community Health and Medicine, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto 602-8566, Japan
Kunihiko Ito: Japan Anti-tuberculosis Association, Tokyo 101-0061, Japan

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 19, 1-8

Abstract: Risk prediction and response measures may differ in tuberculosis (TB) patients with low sputum smear positivity for acid-fast bacillus (AFB) compared to those who are smear negative. However, previous studies using the tuberculin skin test (TST) did not show that differences in measures are important. This study compared results of interferon-gamma release assays (IGRA) between contacts of pulmonary TB patients with AFB smear positivity and those with smear negativity using QuantiFERON ® -TB Gold In-Tube (QFT) assays. Close contacts of TB patients with culture-confirmed infections between April 2010 and December 2012 in Ibaraki, Japan, were enrolled, and 439 Japanese contacts of 129 index TB patients were examined. Adjusted odds ratios of QFT in contacts were 0.68 (95% confidence interval: 0.17–2.8) for AFB scanty patients, 1.12 (0.45–2.8) for AFB 1+, 1.20 (0.48–3.0) for AFB 2+, and 4.96 (1.9–12.9) for AFB 3+, compared to those who were smear negative. Differences in IGRA positivity were not significant between close contacts of TB patients with low positive and negative smears.

Keywords: tuberculosis; smear; AFB; contact infections; IGRA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/19/3713/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/19/3713/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:19:p:3713-:d:272928

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().