You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 69, Issue Suppl 2
  • M37 Does The Tuberculin Skin Test Increase The Detection Of Tb Infection When Screening Hiv Positive Patients? Three Years’ Experience In A District General Hospital

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Tackling tuberculosis
M37 Does The Tuberculin Skin Test Increase The Detection Of Tb Infection When Screening Hiv Positive Patients? Three Years’ Experience In A District General Hospital
  1. A Bennett1,
  2. J Ashby1,
  3. M Curtiss1,
  4. N Pal1,
  5. T Wambaa1,
  6. S Menzies2
  1. 1The Garden Clinic, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Slough, UK
  2. 2Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Slough, UK

Abstract

Background HIV infection is the strongest single risk factor for the development of active tuberculosis (TB) in individuals with latent TB infection (LTBI).1 NICE guidelines recommend screening HIV-positive patients for LTBI with an Interferon Gamma Release Assay (IGRA), plus a Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) in patients with a CD4 count <200 cells/mm3 if IGRA negative.

Method We began screening HIV-positive patients for LTBI in July 2011; this prospective study reports our 3 year data. Patients had an IGRA (T-SPOT. TB®), and a TST was performed in those with a negative result and a CD4 count <200 cells/mm3.

Results 116 HIV-positive patients were screened (Table 1):

CD4 Count ≥200 Group Of 88 patients, 4 (5%) had a history of previous TB infection and were excluded. 70/84 (83%) had a negative IGRA, 9/84 (11%) had a positive IGRA (3 had active TB and 6 LTBI) and 5/84 (6%) had inconclusive IGRA results. Of these, 4/5 had a repeat IGRA (2 positive, 1 negative, 1 awaited) and 1 was lost to follow up.

CD4 Count <200 Group Of 28 patients, 1 (4%) had a history of previous TB infection and was excluded. 24/27 (89%) had a negative IGRA and were referred to TB clinic for a TST. Of these, 18/24 (75%) had a negative TST, 3/24 (12.5%) did not attend and 3/24 (12.5%) are awaiting appointments. 2/27 (7%) had a positive IGRA and were treated for LTBI. One (4%) had an inconclusive IGRA result but did not attend follow up.

Conclusions Screening for TB in HIV is worthwhile, with a 12% detection rate in our cohort. Performing a TST did not detect any additional cases of TB infection in the CD4 <200 group. Performing this test is time-consuming, costly and inconvenient, and we suggest that screening should be with an IGRA alone. The detection rate of TB infection was lower in those with more advanced immunocompromise, which raises concern about the sensitivity of the screening tests.

References

  1. Treatment of latent tuberculosis infection in HIV infected persons. Akolo C, Adetifa I et al. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 1

View this table:
Abstract M37 Table 1

https://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2014-206260.425

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.