Now, simple blood test that can spot TB in HIV patients
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Washington D.C: Most commonly-used tuberculosis (TB) tests usually fail to detect the disease in the patients with HIV, but now a team of researchers has come up with a new blood test, claiming that it can signal a TB infection even if an individual also has HIV.
The simple blood test, which can accurately diagnose active tuberculosis, could make it easier and cheaper to control a disease that kills 1.5 million people every year.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a gene expression "signature" that distinguishes patients with active tuberculosis from those with either latent tuberculosis or other diseases.
The technology fills a need identified by the World Health Organization, which in 2014 challenged researchers to develop better diagnostic tests for active TB.
One-third of the world's population is currently infected with TB. Even if only 10 percent of them get active TB, that's still 3 percent of the world's population, 240 million people, said senior author Purvesh Khatri.
The simple blood test, which can accurately diagnose active tuberculosis, could make it easier and cheaper to control a disease that kills 1.5 million people every year.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a gene expression "signature" that distinguishes patients with active tuberculosis from those with either latent tuberculosis or other diseases.
The technology fills a need identified by the World Health Organization, which in 2014 challenged researchers to develop better diagnostic tests for active TB.
One-third of the world's population is currently infected with TB. Even if only 10 percent of them get active TB, that's still 3 percent of the world's population, 240 million people, said senior author Purvesh Khatri.
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