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LETTER TO THE EDITOR |
assay for detecting TB in children
1 Cellestis Ltd, 1046A Dandenong Road, Victoria, Australia 3163
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr A J Radford
Cellestis Ltd, 1046A Dandenong Road, Victoria, Australia 3163; tony_radford@cellestis.com
Keywords: tuberculosis; children; interferon gamma; tuberculin skin test; diagnosis
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Connell et al1 uses the QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-Gold) test for tuberculosis (TB) infection, but it contains methodological inaccuracies. Unfortunately, the interpretation of the test by Connell et al was not that recommended by the manufacturer. The authors arbitrarily introduced a restriction on the nil control of the QFT-Gold test to <1 IU/ml interferon (IFN)-
, falsely generating a number of "failed" tests. As a result, the data presented by Connell et al significantly overestimate the number of invalid test results and may be misleading to readers.
The authors also present results that attempt to correlate increasing IFN- responses to mitogen (up to 80 IU/ml) with age by extrapolating data beyond the range of the QFT-Gold ELISA. In addition, Connell et al have attempted to compare TB antigen induced IFN- levels with disease state. This assumption may or may not be accurate but, as stated in the QFT-Gold package insert, IFN-
N Curtis2, T G Connell2, J P Buttery2, S C Ranganathan2
2 University of Melbourne, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Royal Children‘s Hospital Melbourne, Australia
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Associate Professor N Curtis
Infectious Diseases Unit, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Flemington Road, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia; nigel.curtis@rch.org.au
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