Background: Accurate identification of individuals with TB infection, is required to achieve the WHO's End TB Strategy goals. While there is general acceptance that the T-SPOT.TB test borderline category provides an opportunity to increase test resolution of results around the test cut-off point, this has not been investigated.
Methods: 645,947 tests were analyzed to determine frequency of borderline results, effect of age and time between tests and associations between subjects' clinical risk factors and retest results.
Results: 645,947 tests produced 93.5% negatives, 4% positives, 0.6% invalids, and 1.8% borderlines. Within the borderline results, 5044 were repeated, with 59.2%, 20.0% and 20.2% resolving to negative, positive and borderline, respectively. Age of subject did not affect retest results; however, time between tests indicated that retest resolution occurred with greatest frequency after 90 days. TB risk factors were provided for 2640 subjects and 17% of low risk subjects with a high initial borderline resolved to negative while 27.6% of subjects with high risk and an initial low borderline resolved to positive, suggesting that these subjects could have been inappropriately classified if using a single cut-off point test with no borderline category.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates the utility of the T-SPOT.TB test's borderline category to increase test resolution around the test cut-off point.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tube.2017.12.005 | DOI Listing |
Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol
January 2025
ENT institute and Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Eye & ENT Hospital, Fudan University, 83 FenYang Road, Shanghai, 200031, China.
Background: Vocal fold leukoplakia (VFL), a precancerous lesion of the larynx, is characterized by white plaques on the vocal fold mucous membrane. Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers to predict the recurrence and malignant transformation of VFL. Considering chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan 4 (CSPG4) as a biomarker for malignant tumors such as laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), we conducted this cohort study to evaluate the prognostic influence of CSPG4 expression on VFL patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Nutr ESPEN
January 2025
Department of The Health Management Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC: Anhui Provincial Hospital, Hefei 230001, Anhui, China. Electronic address:
Background & Aims: The triglyceride-glucose index (TyG) and triglyceride-glucose body mass index (TyG-BMI) have been identified as potential predictive factors for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). However, they do not include high density lipoprotein (HDL-C), which is closely related to lipid metabolism. Furthermore, there is a lack of comprehensive and longitudinal data to determine the cut-off points for different degrees of hepatic steatosis and liver fibrosis in MASLD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActas Dermosifiliogr
January 2025
Department of Dermatology, Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet IIS Aragón, Zaragoza, Spain.
Background: Psoriasis is a chronic disease with a prevalence of 3% in the general population. The high prevalence of psoriasis has prompted the study of its comorbidities in recent decades. However, no studies have ever analyzed comorbidity patterns including all chronic diseases in psoriatic patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmaceutics
December 2024
Pharmathen SA, 31 Spartis Str., 14452 Metamorfosi Attica, Greece.
Regulatory authorities typically require bioequivalence to be demonstrated by comparing pharmacokinetic parameters like area under the plasma concentration-time curve (AUC) and maximum plasma concentration (C). Because in certain cases, AUC and C alone may not be adequate to identify formulation differences in early and/or late segments of the dosing interval, partial AUCs (pAUCs) have been proposed as additional metrics to evaluate bioequivalence. Even though cut-off points for pAUCs are usually decided based on clinical relevance, the identification of the correct cut-off range remains elusive in many other cases and tends to contribute to increased pAUC estimate variabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNutrients
January 2025
Department of Community Medicine, "Iuliu Hatieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 400349 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Background/objectives: This study aimed to investigate the lifestyle and the behavioral factors that influence the nutritional status of adolescents from Transylvania, Romania.
Methods: The Global School-Based Student Health Survey (GSHS) was used to collect data from 900 adolescents between 11 and 18 years old from the Transylvania region, Romania. This study assessed nutritional status by calculating BMI indicators adjusted to Z-Score, cut-off points according to the World Health Organization (WHO), using self-reported weight and height; perceived health status; food vulnerability; physical activity; addictive behaviors (cigarette, alcohol and drug consumption); number of hours spent in front of the computer/phone; hand and oral hygiene; sitting time/day; and sleep.
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