Use of point-of-care C-reactive protein testing for screening of tuberculosis in the community in high-burden settings: a prospective, cross-sectional study in Zambia and South Africa.

Background: WHO recommends community-wide, systematic tuberculosis screening in high-prevalence settings. C-reactive protein has been proposed as a tuberculosis screening tool for people living with HIV. We aimed to assess the performance of a point-of-care C-reactive protein test for tuberculosis screening in the community in two countries with a high tuberculosis burden.

Optimising Xpert-Ultra and culture testing to reliably measure tuberculosis prevalence in the community: findings from surveys in Zambia and South Africa.

Objectives: Prevalence surveys remain the best way to assess the national tuberculosis (TB) burden in many countries. Challenges with using culture (the reference standard) for TB diagnosis in prevalence surveys have led to increasing use of molecular tests (Xpert assays), but discordance between these two tests has created problems for deciding which individuals have TB. We aimed to design an accurate diagnostic algorithm for TB prevalence surveys (TBPS) that limits the use of culture.