Oxford, UK; 10th September 2007 – Oxford Immunotec Ltd., the T cell measurement company, today announced the publication of a recent study demonstrating the potential use of T-SPOT.TB in monitoring anti-LTBI treatment.
In this study reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Chee et al investigated the close contacts of smear or culture positive subjects who were treated with standard chemoprophylaxis therapy and were then followed up with a T-SPOT.TB test following completion of this therapy.
This study showed that at the completion of LTBI therapy 38% of the subjects reverted to a negative T-SPOT.TB result. Moreover, in subjects who were only positive to CFP 10, one of the two antigens in the T-SPOT.TB assay, 65% reverted to a negative T-SPOT.TB result.
These findings suggest that the quantitative response to CFP 10 may be a potentially useful treatment monitoring tool.
Commenting on the results, Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Immunotec said, “This study provides additional evidence that the T-SPOT.TB test may have a role to play as an additional tool in the monitoring of anti-TB treatments. Treatment monitoring in TB infection is particularly important since the treatment period is typically six months or longer. Additionally, the test may become one of the few tools available to clinicians to monitor the effectiveness of treatment in MDR-TB and XDR-TB, which are becoming more prevalent.”
