Enhancing Pediatric Diagnosis of Tuberculosis with FLOW Technology

ABSTRACT While proper diagnosis is key to effective TB treatment, there exist specific barriers to TB testing in low resource settings, especially for children. While a number of TB diagnostic tools are available, they each suffer from critical drawbacks (difficult, inaccurate, expensive) that limit their widespread implementation in low resource settings

and their feasibility in children. A mycobacterial cell wall glycolipid, lipoarabinomannan (LAM), as a diagnostic pathogen biomarker has been widely demonstrated and one point-of-care (POC) LAM assay (Alere Determine™ TB LAM) is currently on the market. Alere’s technology incorporates LAM detection in a urine-based lateral flow

assay (LFA) and while easy to use, its poor diagnostic sensitivity limits its utility to patients with extremely high LAM concentrations (e.g., patients with advanced HIV disease and CD4 counts