TB checks ‘miss cases’
Screening procedures for tuberculosis in immigrants in the UK are missing the majority of cases, new research has revealed.
Using new blood checks rather than chest X-rays would detect over 90 more than of imported latent TB, experts said, as opposed to the current failure to detect more than 70 per cent of cases of latent infection.
A team of researchers at Imperial College London said new methods of blood testing would mean that people with imported latent TB could be given a course of antibiotics to prevent them from developing an active form of the disease.
TB is caused by a bacterial infection which leads to active disease in around one in 10 infections and kills around half of the people affected.