Clinical Usefulness of T-SPOT.TB Test for the Diagnosis of Tuberculosis

Results : Positive rates of group 1 (96.4%) and group 2 (92.3%) were higher than those of group 3 (31.6%) and group 4 (27.4%) (P<0.0001). The sensitivity deduced from group 1 and specificity deduced from group 4 of T-SPOT.TBtest were 96.4% and 72.6%, respectively. The average spot counts of group 1 and 2 were higher than those of group 3 and 4 (P<0.001). There was a tendency of increasing positive rate with increasing age. Overall agreement between T-SPOT.TBtest and tuberculinskin test was 63.8% (kappa=0.29). Conclusions : T-SPOT.TBtest would be a very useful screening and supplementary test for diagnosis of tuberculosis due to its high sensitivity. However, positive results of T-SPOT.TBshould be cautiously interpreted because of high positivity in treated tuberculosis patients and healthy volunteers in Korea. (Korean J Lab Med 2010;30:171-7)