L, thanks for those very interesting links. It's funny with...

L,
thanks for those very interesting links. It's funny with some of these researchers, Pai and Menzies took a stand sometime ago in favour of the TST and thus influenced the Canadian guidelines, then when research builds up contradicting their initial ideas it seems ego gets in the way of them changing their tune.

The other link indicates an ever increasing interest in TB blood tests by European countries, particularly Eastern European ones. Easy to understand with the epidemic of MDR and XDR TB now taking over in Eastern Europe.

As per the session below there seems now to be a lot of interest in QFT for TB testing prior to commencing drug treatment for a number of other conditions where the drugs used lower immunity and increase the patient's susceptibility to TB. It seems patients taking rheumatoid arthritis drugs could be a huge market for QFT, any idea of the size of this potential market?
Also more and more we are seeing emphasis placed on the need to combine AIDS and TB testing.

"A screening for latent tuberculosis infection among candidates to anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha agents using a whole blood interferon-gamma test"

regards, EB