Authors' reply

Eman N Eldin

Official publication of the Saudi Thoracic Society, affiliated to King Saud University

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Year : 2013 | Volume : 8 | Issue : 1 | Page : 64

Authors' reply

Eman N Eldin
Department of Clinical Pathology, Assiut University Hospital, Egypt

Date of Web Publication

9-Jan-2013

Correspondence Address:
Eman N Eldin
Department of Clinical Pathology, Assiut University Hospital
Egypt

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

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How to cite this article:
Eldin EN. Authors' reply. Ann Thorac Med 2013;8:64

How to cite this URL:
Eldin EN. Authors' reply. Ann Thorac Med [serial online] 2013 [cited 2023 Mar 29];8:64. Available from: https://www.thoracicmedicine.org/text.asp?2013/8/1/64/105724

Sir,

We would like to thank Dr. Lai in his letter. ^[1] He mentioned that we failed to describe patient's characteristics in all aspects and also did not show us the results of all the methodology used. We would like to mention that the paper Jung JY et al. ^[2] addressed in the letter found that the IGRA sensitivity and specificity (95% CI) were: QFT-GIT (59.0% (44.9-72.0)) and (61.3% (54.4-67.6)) and T-SPOT.TB (72.0% (54.2-86.2)) and (42.3% (33.8-49.1)), respectively. For TST, the sensitivity was 41.2% (28.3-50.8) and specificity was 91.8% (85.8-96.30). The sensitivities of the three diagnostic methods tended to be lower in the immunosuppressive drug group than in other groups (QFT-GIT 11.1%, T-SPOT.TB 40.0%, and TST 25.0% in patients with taking immunosuppressive drugs). Lai et al. ^[3] found that T-SPOT.TB had a higher sensitivity and resulted in fewer indeterminate results than the QFT-GIT assay for diagnosing active TB.

References

1.	Su SY, Chao CM, Lai CC. Diagnostic performance of interferon-Gamma assay for tuberculosis in immunocompromised patients. Ann Thorac Med 2013;8:64.
2.	Jung JY, Lim JE, Lee HJ, Kim YM, Cho SN, Kim SK, et al. Questionable role of interferon-g assays for smear-negative pulmonary TB in immunocompromised patients. J Infect 2012;64:188-96
3.	Lai CC, Tan CK, Lin SH, Liao CH, Huang YT, Hsueh PR. Diagnostic performance of whole-blood interferon-γ assay and enzyme-linked immunospot assay for active tuberculosis. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis 2011;71:139-43. [PUBMED]