Publications by authors named "L Asege"
Background: Sputum-based testing is a barrier to increasing access to molecular diagnostics for tuberculosis (TB). Many people with TB are unable to produce sputum, and sputum processing increases assay complexity and cost. Tongue swabs are emerging as an alternative to sputum, but performance limits are uncertain.
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- Reliance on sputum testing hampers access to TB molecular diagnostics, leading researchers to explore tongue swabs as a potential alternative.
- From June 2022 to July 2023, a study in Kampala, Uganda, involved 397 adults to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of tongue swab qPCR against traditional sputum tests.
- The findings indicate a high concordance (98.2%) between tongue swab qPCR and sputum tests, with sensitivity at 91.0% and specificity at 98.9%, suggesting that tongue swabs could effectively facilitate TB diagnosis.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to evaluate how common severe liver enzyme elevation (transaminitis) is in people with HIV in Uganda who are being screened for tuberculosis (TB) preventive therapy.
- Out of 313 participants, only 2% had severe transaminitis, with no cases found among individuals screening negative for TB by symptoms.
- The findings suggest that severe transaminitis is rare in this population, indicating that it is not a significant obstacle to increasing TB preventive therapy in people living with HIV.
Detection of tuberculosis at the point-of-care (POC) is limited by the low sensitivity of current commercially available tests. We describe a diagnostic accuracy field evaluation of a prototype urine Tuberculosis Lipoarabinomannan Lateral Flow Assay (TB-LAM LFA) in both HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients using fresh samples with sensitivity and specificity as the measures of accuracy. This prototype combines a proprietary concentration system with a sensitive LFA.
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