El Marañon is working on a biomarker to detect tuberculosis

Researchers Department of Infectious Diseases, Pediatric Service, Gregorio Marañon Hospital, public health network of the Community of Madrid and belonging to the territory Infectious Diseases Network Biomedical Research Center (CIBER)), published in the journal new results of diagnosing childhood tuberculosis using plasma biomarkers. Journal of Microbiology, Immunology and infections. The results of the study by a group led by Dr. Marisa Navarro They represent a promising advance in the diagnosis of childhood tuberculosis, providing a more accurate and accessible strategy for detecting the disease.

childhood tuberculosis It is a major global health problem despite being considered a preventable and treatable disease. The main barrier to its control is the difficulty of accessing diagnostic tests in places where the prevalence of the disease is higher.

The pediatric population is particularly vulnerable, and diagnosis poses even greater challenges in children, especially the youngest. This is due to its limited ability to collect sputum, as this sample has the highest diagnostic sensitivity. Diagnostic tests in children have low sensitivity, so the lack of microbiological confirmation, Together with clinical symptoms that can be confused with other respiratory infections, they lead to underdiagnosis and can progress from infection to disease and the appearance of severe and extrapulmonary forms.

Promising results in biomarkers

The study results showed that the combination of several blood biomarkers achieved the levels required by the World Health Organization (WHO) for a triage test. In particular, the combination The sensitivity of IFN-γ/MCP-1 reached 87.9%. and a specificity of 66.6%, which represents promising progress in the diagnosis of childhood tuberculosis.

In addition, researchers examined the relationship between various biomarkers to distinguish active TB from latent infection, but found no significant differences. This highlights the complexity difference in diagnoses

l between these two stages of tuberculosis, which remains a challenge in clinical practice.

This is a collaborative study involving researchers from Service of Pediatrics, Microbiology and Infectious Diseases of the Gregorio Marañon Hospitalincluding researchers from the Respiratory Diseases Unit of the Center for Networked Biomedical Research (CIBER) and in collaboration with the Klinck Ottarging Tuberculosis Reference Center in Vienna.

Future prospects

Although these results require further validation in other groups and in larger numbers of patients, they represent an encouraging prospect for improving the diagnosis of tuberculosis in children. Usage plasma biomarkers may offer a less invasive and more accurate alternative to current diagnostic methods, especially in resource-limited settings.

“This study is an important step toward more accurate and accessible diagnosis of childhood tuberculosis, a problem that continues to disproportionately affect children around the world,” says Dr. Navarro. “Although there is still work to be done, our results provide a strong basis for the development of new diagnostic strategies that may improve clinical outcomes in this vulnerable population.”

The research team coordinates Spanish Pediatric Tuberculosis Network (pTBred) and actively cooperates with the European Network (pTBnet). The pTBred database is hosted on the RedCap server of the Gregorio Marañon Hospital and includes clinical and epidemiological data on children diagnosed with tuberculosis from hospitals throughout Spain.