TB Diagnostics: Existing Platform and Future Direction |Biomedgrid

For over 200 years, tuberculosis (TB) has been the leading infectious killer in the world [1] and has only been paralleled by COVID-19 over the past 2 years [2]. About 10 million people developed TB globally and 1.3 million died in 2020 [1]. Despite progresses made in global TB control, TB remains a major health concern, with drug resistance growing in proportion [1]. The COVID-19 pandemic also confounded efforts to end the plague of TB as outlined by the End TB strategy [1, 3]. Rapid, early diagnosis and timely management of drug-susceptible TB combined with universal drug susceptibility testing (DST) is essential in the efforts to end the TB pandemic [1]. However, most people affected by TB do not have access to essential diagnostics and expertise to diagnose TB early, and less so have access to adequate DST [4]. This article gives an overview of the current diagnostic platform for active TB in adults and briefly reviews the gaps in TB diagnostic algorithms in low resource settings.