Evaluation of the performance of two tuberculosis interferon gamma release assays (IGRA-ELISA and T-SPOT.TB) for diagnosing Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection

Objectives: The IGRA-ELISA and T-SPOT.TB are widely used in China. The aim of the study was to evaluate the performance of the two assays in diagnosis Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Methods: Of the 3727 patients in the study, 204 underwent testing using both the T-SPOT.TB and IGRA-ELISA, 1794 were tested using the T-SPOT.TB only, and 1729 were tested using the IGRA-ELISA only. The positive rate and consistency of the two assays were analyzed, and their sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing active tuberculosis were compared. Results: There were no significant differences in the positive rate between the T-SPOT.TB test (25.8%) and IGRA-ELISA (28.6%), p =.065. The two assays were highly consistent, with a kappa value of 0.852 (p <.0001) and a total coincidence rate of 92.7%. For the diagnosis of active tuberculosis, the sensitivity and specificity values of the T-SPOT.TB test were 82.9% (107/129) and 78.6% (1309/1665), respectively, and those of IGRA-ELISA were 81.7% (94/115) and 75.2% (1214/1614), respectively. There were no significant differences in sensitivity (p >.05), but the specificity of the T-SPOT.TB test was slightly higher than that of IGRA-ELISA (p =.023). Conclusion: Both in terms of diagnosing M. tuberculosis infection and ruling out active tuberculosis, the performance of the IGRA-ELISA—a simple, almost labor-free assay that allows simultaneous processing of a very large number of samples—was well-matched with that of T-SPOT.TB test. However, IGRAs cannot be used as the only test to diagnose active tuberculosis.