Urinary biomarkers of mycobacterial load and treatment response in pulmonary tuberculosis.

BACKGROUNDControl of the tuberculosis (TB) pandemic remains hindered in part by a lack of simple and accurate measures of treatment efficacy, as current gold standard markers rely on sputum-based assays that are slow and challenging to implement. However, previous work identified urinary N1, N12-diacetylspermine (DiAcSpm), neopterin, hydroxykynurenine, N-acetylhexosamine, ureidopropionic acid, sialic acid, and mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) 241.0903 as potential biomarkers of active pulmonary TB (ATB).