Kekkaku : [Tuberculosis]May 12, 2009

Future research directions for tests measuring interferon-gamma release

Updated Apr 1, 2026

Abstract

Two diagnostic tests for tuberculosis infection, QuantiFERON-TB Gold and T-SPOT, have been developed, with QuantiFERON-TB Gold currently approved in Japan.

QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-2G) measures interferon-gamma production using whole blood and is recommended for tuberculosis contact investigations.
T-SPOT, which uses peripheral blood mononuclear cells, is not yet approved in Japan.
Both tests are designed to be more specific than traditional tuberculin skin tests.
IGRAs are a recent advancement in tuberculosis diagnostics, prompting ongoing research questions.

Simplified

Recently, new diagnostic tests for tuberculosis infection that are more specific than tuberculin skin tests have been developed and have become commercially available. These tests determine interferon-gamma production after stimulation with M. tuberculosis-specific antigens, ESAT-6 and CFP-10, and are named Interferon-Gamma Release Assays (IGRA). Currently, two IGRA formats are available. One is QuantiFERON TB-2G (QFT-2G, called Quanti FERON-TB Gold outside Japan), which uses the whole blood and has been approved as a diagnostic test for tuberculosis infection in Japan. The use of QFT-2G was recommended for contact investigations in the revised guidelines in 2006. The other format of IGRA is T-SPOT.TB (T-SPOT), which uses peripheral blood mononuclear cells. T-SPOT has not yet been approved in Japan. IGRA was developed just recently, so there are many research questions to be addressed. In 2007, Pai et al. reported a comprehensive research agenda on IGRA). We introduced a review of Pai et al. in Japanese with reference to our published reports. The references in the review of Pai et al. appear as they are, and our new references are numbered with Roman numerals.

Abstract

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