What is it about?

The QIAreach QuantiFERON-TB (QIAreach QFT) is a new portable Interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) designed to detect tuberculosis (TB) infection and adapted to be used in limited resource settings. Usability of the QIAreach QFT platform had not been evaluated on users in a real-life limited resource setting with high TB burden. We evaluated the usability of the prototype QIAreach QFT platform in Zambia. Our findings highlighted that the platform can easily be used by skilled or semi-skilled technicians, and it has potential to be used for early detection of TB infection in low-resource, high-burden areas.

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Why is it important?

This article investigates the usability of innovative technologies that require minimal infrastructure and training to diagnose TB infection. Knowing the usability of the assay has an impact to improve accessibility of TB infection testing in low-resource settings. QIAreach QFT is a new version of the 4th generation of IGRAs (QuantiFERONⓇ-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus)) utilizing innovative digital lateral flow technology. QIAreach QFT has several advantages compared to other IGRAs. The QIAreach QFT is a field-friendly battery operated system that replaces the laboratory-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) workflow. The system also uses an optimized single tube workflow requiring 1 mL compared with the 4 mL needed for QFT-plus and T-SPOT. The QIAreach QFT assay requires a time to results of 20 minutes compared to the 150 minutes needed for the ELISA-based detection assay. In addition, the QIAreach QFT allows running eight samples independently eliminating the need to batch samples thus providing timely TB infection diagnosis. Our findings show that the platform is easy to use, therefore, it can help in early detection of TB infection which can lead to early treatment preventing occurrence of active TB potentially interrupting TB transmission in high risk populations in high burden regions with limited infrastructure.

Perspectives

Writing this article was an exciting opportunity and I believe this publication will be eye catching to all researchers, scientists and policy makers as we all fight to end TB by using new relevant TB diagnostic tools which are cost effective. Despite the new platform being designed for limited resource settings, this work is universally applicable as TB is a global disease and the QIAreach QFT test provides a significant contribution to global TB infection diagnostics.

Conceptor Kaaba

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Assessing usability of QIAreach QuantiFERON-TB platform in a high tuberculosis prevalence, low-resource setting, ERJ Open Research, October 2021, European Respiratory Society (ERS),
DOI: 10.1183/23120541.00511-2021.
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