Novel and Improved Technologies for Tuberculosis Diagnosis: Progress and Challenges
Despite a decade of success in improving cure rates for tuberculosis (TB), diagnosis and case detection remain a major obstacle to TB control. This article reviews the existing evidence base on TB diagnostics, describes the progress of new technologies, and ends with a review of cost-effectiveness and modeling studies on the potential effect of new diagnostics in TB control.
aDepartment of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health, McGill University, 1020 Pine Avenue West, Montreal, H3A 1A2, Canada
bFoundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, Avenue de Budé, 161202 Geneva, Switzerland
Corresponding author.
Financial and competing interests disclosure: Madhukar Pai, Hojoon Sohn and Mark Perkins are affiliated with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Geneva. FIND is a nonprofit agency that works with several industry partners in developing and evaluating new diagnostics for neglected infectious diseases. Madhukar Pai and Mark Perkins are core group members of the Stop TB Partnership's New Diagnostics Working Group. The authors have no financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in this article apart from those disclosed. This work was supported in part by Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) grant MOP-89,918 and MOP-81,362, and European Commission grant TBSusgent (FP7-HEALTH-2007-B). Madhukar Pai is supported by a CIHR New Investigator Award. These funding agencies had no role in the development of this article.
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