CIDRAP: Ultrasensitive Test Detects TB DNA in Unexpected Number of US Patients

15 April 2026

CIDRAP news story

A highly sensitive molecular test for TB detected Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in a surprising proportion of hospitalized patients, raising questions about undetected forms of the disease, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Communications.

Using an ultrasensitive assay that can detect TB at levels below the limits of standard diagnostic tools, a team led by Boston University (BU) researchers tested a set of 146 anonymized respiratory samples collected at two Boston hospitals from May to September 2013 and 50 control samples collected from May to July 2014.

To determine clinical associations and outcomes, they also conducted a longitudinal clinical study with 101 samples collected from February to June 2014; all patients but one were hospitalized.

The Totally Optimized PCR [polymerase chain reaction] TB assay found TB DNA in a notable number of patients; in an initial set of samples collected at the hospitals, 12.3% tested positive for TB DNA, compared with 2% of control samples. In the follow-up cohort, 15.8% of samples were positive, although one sample couldn’t be sequenced. An incidence rate of 12% to 16% is far higher than expected, given Boston’s low rate of TB cases.

Read the full news story here.

 

Source: CIDRAP