pennant alert, page-13

re: could be last chance Just one example of the huge amount of reportage that the release of the CDC guidelines in the US is getting.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/briefs/publichealth/hb060104b.htm

1/4/06
New, more accurate TB test
By Helen Fields

For over a hundred years, tuberculosis tests have gone like this: A healthcare professional pricks your skin with a dab of TB protein and, two days later, looks for a 10-millimeter bump on your skin, which may be a sign you have a latent TB infection that could turn active and infectious if left untreated. But the test can sometimes cause a reaction even if you don't have the disease. What's more, many people don't show up for the second visit—the bump exam—and judging the size of that bump takes special training.

Enter the alternative: the QuantiFERON-TB Gold test. This blood test, newly recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gives a result after one visit and has fewer false positives than the old-school skin test. People who work on TB control "are very eager to have it," says Neil Schluger, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University. "I think it can replace skin testing, and I think that's a significant advance." The San Francisco Department of Public Health, in fact, already uses the blood test instead of the skin one in its main clinic; many private health plans are expected to switch to the new test, too.

Although only about 15,000 people in the United States develop active TB each year, the disease remains one of the leading killers worldwide.

"Here's one of the world's great public-health problems, and we're just now getting rid of a test that we've been using for 100 years," Schluger says. "I think it's just a reflection of how little progress there's been."

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