Welcome to the website of the New Diagnostics Working Group
The New Diagnostics Working Group is a one of the seven Working Groups of the Stop TB Partnership. It aims at supporting the Partnership in its goal of elimination of TB, in particular by promoting the development and adoption of new diagnostic tools.
The New Diagnostics Working Group is a network of experts representing stakeholders from academia, government, industry, NGOs and the patient community.
Latest News
End-of-year message from Dr Lucica Ditiu, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership: "Let us together make 2012 a reference year in TB!"
The Executive Secretary’s end-of-year message was an opportunity for Dr. Lucica Ditiu to reflect on the Stop TB Partnership’s achievements in 2011 and on the challenges that lie ahead. She recognized that 2012 would be a critical year, just three years away from the deadline for meeting the MDC targets, and also a difficult one. She suggested five New Years' resolutions that should help us meet the challenges we are facing.
New WHO recommendations on use of commercial TB IGRAs in low- and middle-income countries
31 October 2011
The WHO has published new recommendations related to the use of IGRAs as a replacement of the tuberculin skin test (TST) to detect latent TB in low- and middle-income countries.
The key recommendations are:
- IGRAs and the TST cannot accurately predict the risk of infected individuals developing active TB;
- Neither IGRAs nor the TST should be used for the diagnosis of active TB disease;
- IGRAs are more costly and technically complex to do than the TST. Given comparable performance but increased cost, replacing the TST by IGRAs in resource-constrained settings is not recommended.
Link: WHO Policy Statement on IGRAs
Horse riders, text messages and creative solutions improve TB detection in Lesotho
9 September
Lesotho is a small land-locked country surrounded by South Africa. It has both the second highest incidence of TB (640 per 100,000) and the second highest HIV co-infection rate of adult TB cases in the world.
In this predominantly mountainous country with three-quarters of the population living in rural settings, diagnosis remains inaccessible to the majority of affected communities. The Stop TB Partnership’s TB REACH initiative in collaboration with FIND brings testing and treatment to the most remote villages through innovative approaches. Horse riders ensure sample collection in secluded areas where riding is the only transport option and village health workers use a mobile text message system to track test results and put patients on treatment without delay.
WHO warns against the use of inaccurate blood tests for active tuberculosis (TB)
20 July 2011 - WHO has called for countries to ban the use of serological (blood) tests to diagnose active TB disease in a policy issued today, which described the results from these blood tests as inaccurate and a major risk to the health of patients.
Despite the wide use of these blood tests, evidence reviewed by a WHO expert group and published today concluded that "commercial serological tests provide inconsistent and imprecise estimates" and that "it is strongly recommended that these tests not be used for the diagnosis of pulmonary and extra-pulmonary TB."
More than a million TB blood tests (also known as serodiagnostic or serological tests) are carried out every year, usually at a substantial cost to patients.
Today's recommendation does not apply to serological tests for latent TB infection, currently under review by WHO and findings expected to be released next month.
http://www.who.int/tb/features_archive/20july11_end_to_inaccurate_tb_blood_tests/en/index.html
WHO factsheet on serodiagnostics
WHO policy