Dr James Brown co-authors paper on new type of IGRA

Congratulations to North East Thames trainee Dr James Brown who has co-authored a paper with Dr Marc Lipman and others in the European Respiratory Journal.

The article “First evaluation of QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus performance in contact screening” evaluated for the first time the performance of a new type of interferon-γ release assay, QuantiFERON-TB Plus (QFT-Plus), which includes an additional antigen tube (TB2), stimulating both CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells in contacts of TB patients.

In 119 TB contacts, the overall agreement between QFT-Plus and QFT-GIT was high. Discordant results were found in 12 subjects with negative QFT-GIT and positive QFT-Plus results.

QFT-Plus has a stronger association with surrogate measures of TB exposure than QFT-GIT in adults screened for latent TB infection. Interferon-γ response in the new antigen tube used an indirect estimate of specific CD8+ response correlates with increased Mycobacterium tuberculosis exposure, suggesting a possible role in identifying individuals with recent infection

For more, read the full text article here:

• Barcellini, L., Borroni, E., Brown, J., Brunetti, E., Campisi, D., Castellotti, P.F., Codecasa, L.R., Cugnata, F., Di Serio, C., Ferrarese, M. and Goletti, D., 2016. First evaluation of QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus performance in contact screening. European Respiratory Journal, pp.ERJ-00510.