Bioengineer.org | Emerging Tests Show Promise for Telling Latent TB Apart from Active Disease

28 October 2026

Bioengineer.org news story

A systematic review published in BMC Infectious Diseases has evaluated whether new diagnostic approaches can reliably distinguish latent TB infection from active TB, a distinction that current immunological tests cannot make with confidence.

Latent TB infection affects approximately one quarter of the global population and represents a major reservoir for future active TB. The existing immunological diagnostics, including the tuberculin skin test and interferon-gamma release assays, are unable to reliably distinguish latent infection from active disease, which limits their clinical utility for targeted prevention strategies.

The review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines. In its initial phase, the authors searched PubMed and Scopus from January 2005 to May 2022 for primary studies evaluating diagnostic tests intended to differentiate latent TB infection from active TB. A second phase repeated a similar search from May 2022 to 2026 to capture more up-to-date results.

Read the full news story here.

Source: Bioengineer.org