Advances in Biomedical Technology for Tuberculosis Diagnosis

Abstract

          Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health problem. The latest WHO report estimates included in this report are that there were 8.6 million new TB cases in 2012 and 1.3 million TB deaths (just under 1.0 million among HIV-negative people and 0.3 million HIV-associated TB deaths). TB is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus mainly Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It typically affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can affect other sites as well (extrapulmonary TB). The disease is spread in the air when people who are sick with pulmonary TB expel bacteria, for example by coughing. In general, a relatively small proportion of people infected with M. tuberculosis will develop TB disease; however, the probability of developing TB is much higher among people infected with HIV. Diagnosis of TB infection is essential not only for treatment of the infected individual, but also for controlling its spread among various populations. The current routine diagnostic tests for TB such as chest x-ray, sputum smear microscopy, sputum culture and drug susceptibility testing, have their limitations. A chest x-ray alone is inaccurate method for diagnosis of TB infection. Sputum smear microscopy has low sensitivity to detect bacteria in sputum. Sputum culture and drug susceptibility testing take too long time to produce a result. New biomedical technologies for TB diagnosis have been developed, such as Interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA), Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) etc., to improve accuracy precision and rapidity to detect M. tuberculosis. That is the gateway to success in tuberculosis controlling.