Serological diagnostic assays for HIV-associated tuberculosis in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Abstract

In this issue of Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, Siev and colleagues present an evaluation of antibody responses to four immunodominant proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in patients with HIV-associated pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa (M. Siev, D. Wilson, S. Kainth, V. O. Kasprowicz, C. M. Feintuch, E. Jenny-Avital, and J. J. Achkar, 21:791-798, 2014, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/CVI.00805-13). This commentary discusses the enormous need for simple point-of-care assays for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis in patients with and without HIV coinfection in high-burden settings and considers the potential role of serological assays and the huge challenges inherent in developing and validating such assays. Copyright © 2014, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.