Journal of Infectious Diseases & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

The diagnosis of active and latent tuberculosis remains a challenge. Although a new approach based on detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific T-cells has been introduced, it cannot distinguish between latent infection and active disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic potential of interleukin-2 (IL-2) as biomarker after specific antigen stimulation with PE35 and PPE68 for the discrimination of active and latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI). The production of IL-2 was measured in the antigenstimulated whole-blood supernatants following stimulation with recombinant PE35 and PPE68. The discrimination performance (assessed by the area under ROC curve) for IL-2 following stimulation with recombinant PE35 and PPE68 between LTBI and patients with active TB were 0.837 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.72-0.97] for LTBI diagnosis and 0.75 (95% CI 0.63-0.89) for active TB diagnosis, respectively. Applying the 6.4 pg/mL cut-off for IL-2 induced by PE35 in the present study population resulted in sensitivity of 78%, specificity of 83%, PPV of 83% and NPV of 78% for the discrimination of active TB and LTBI. In addition, a sensitivity of 81%, specificity of 71%, PPV of 68 and 83% of NPV was reported based on the 4.4 pg/mL cut-off for IL-2 induced by PPE68. This study confirms IL-2 induced by PE35 and PPE68 as a sensitive and specific biomarker and highlights IL-2 as new promising adjunct markers for discriminating of LTBI and active TB disease.

Biography

Email: mahmoudi18033@gmail.com