US researchers said they have successfully developed a blood test that can rapidly diagnose and quantitate the severity of active tuberculosis (TB) cases, an important advance against the major global health threat, a media report said. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), TB remains a major global health problem, with 10 million cases and 2 million deaths per year.Making matters worse, TB bacteria can lurk in a person’s lung tissue for decades, before spontaneously producing full-blown TB disease that can then spread to others.
Currently, the WHO estimates that up to one-third of the world’s population may have such dormant TB infections. For exact diagnosis of Active or dormant TB, coughed-up sputum, blood culture tests, invasive lung and lymph biopsies, or spinal taps or from peritoneal pleural fluid cytology, ADA test or cytology are the only way to diagnose TB, said…
