AsianScientist (Aug. 5, 2011) – Scientists are reporting an advance toward a fast, inexpensive urine test to detect and monitor the effectiveness of treatment for tuberculosis (TB), which is on a rampage in the developing world. Their study appears in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry.
A team led by Virander Singh Chauhan and Ranjan Kumar Nanda from the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in New Delhi notes that TB strikes an estimated 10 million people and kills three million each year, mostly in developing countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the largest number of new TB cases in 2008 occurred in the Southeast Asia region, which accounted for 35 percent of incident cases globally. It is estimated that annually around 330,000 Indians die of the disease, and India accounts for one fifth of global tuberculosis cases.
Health care workers diagnose the disease by identifying the TB bacterium in sputum or blood samples. But current tests tend to be time-consuming, sometimes taking days or weeks to give results. The tests also require specially trained personnel or expensive equipment that may not be available.
Taking samples from patients presenting with cough for more than three weeks at the Lala Ram Sarup Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, the scientists analyzed volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – substances that evaporate easily in the air – present in the urine of TB patients and compared them with VOCs in the urine of healthy patients.
They found that infection with TB produces a distinct pattern of certain VOCs in much the same way that distinct fingerprint patterns can identify individuals.
Identification of these patterns sets the stage for developing a portable “electronic nose” that can quickly detect TB in urine samples, the scientists suggest.
The article can be found at: Banday KM et al. (2011) Use of Urine Volatile Organic Compounds To Discriminate Tuberculosis Patients from Healthy Subjects.
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Source: American Chemical Society.
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