There is an urgent need for new tools for the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis disease. We evaluated the potentials of 74 host markers as biomarkers for the immunological diagnosis of tuberculosis and monitoring of treatment response. Fifty-five individuals that presented with signs and symptoms requiring investigation for tuberculosis disease were prospectively recruited prior to clinical diagnosis, at a health centre in Cape Town, South Africa. Patients were later classified as having tuberculosis disease or other respiratory diseases (ORD) using a combination of clinical, radiological and laboratory findings. Out of 74 host markers that were evaluated in plasma samples from study participants using a multiplex platform, 18 showed potential as tuberculosis diagnostic candidates with the most promising being NCAM, CRP, SAP, IP-10, ferritin, TPA, I-309, and MIG, which diagnosed tuberculosis disease individually, with area under the ROC curve ≥0.80. Six-marker biosignatures containing NCAM diagnosed tuberculosis disease with a sensitivity of 100% (95%CI, 86.3-100%) and specificity of 89.3% (95%CI, 67.6-97.3%) irrespective of HIV status, and 100% accuracy in the absence of HIV infection. Furthermore, the concentrations of 11 of these proteins changed with treatment, thereby indicating that they may be useful in monitoring of the response to tuberculosis treatment. Our findings have potential to be translated into a point-of-care screening test for tuberculosis, after future validation studies.
Keywords: Immune response; Immunity; Immunology and Microbiology Section; acute phase proteins; biomarker; diagnosis; neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM); tuberculosis.