afeb meeting transcript

Good Morning,

The transcript of the AFEB meeting has just been published on the web at http://www.ha.osd.mil/afeb/meetings/021803meeting/Transcripts%2002-18-2003%20AFEB.pdf

The Quantiferon presentations start from page 205 and run through to the end of the document (some 50 pages). I have just spent the last hour having a quick read of it. As usual it is very interesting reading with the results from many of the trials completed and/or running around the world.

If you want to cut to the chase then start from around page 250 where the board is asking questions. This is where you can perhaps gain some sort of insight into the way the board is leaning on this. It is very worthshile reading the entire presentation if you have the perseverence.

There is a lot of information in there and hopefully it will mean even more on a second read through (who needs a life?).

Just a couple of immediate and obvious points of interest.

- The board made it pretty clear (and gave the reasons why) that a decision to switch to QFT for bulk latent TB testing should be an all or nothing. That is, using TST at some sites and QFT at others for initial testing is not feasible. (This does not rule out the use of followup TST for QFT +ves as permitted by the CDC guideline)

- Towards the very end of the document mention was made of the ongoing problems that the military have had with TST testing in the past. Mainly due to either bad batches of PPD or incorrect interpretation of induration).

- I found the expansion of the discussion of the testing doen in cattle (with a gold standard - kill) very very interesting. My feeling is that QFT is actually far more accurate than the statistics can show but this cannot be said (for humans) because of the lack of a gold standard. This mus be really frustrating for the company.

- The company was congratulated by the board for the progress that they have made since the last presentation.

In my opinion, the overall impression was extremely positive towards Quantiferon but read it for yourself and make your own decision.