Abstract

Objective: The main purpose of this article is to list out the most recently updated diagnostic tools for tuberculosis. Unfortunately, most of the patients are diagnosed after many weeks of infection which may lead to complications and prolongation of standard drug therapy. This might results in failure of adherence and poor health related quality of life. Sometimes, many of them are never diagnosed which results in millions of yearly death worldwide. As it is highly infectious disease, the main target should be to control the disease by developing the highly advanced diagnostic techniques for the early detection and to provide standard appropriate treatment as early as possible. This will help to reduce the transmission risk and improve the health related quality of life.   

Summary: Since tuberculosis has been a major challenge for the early detection of the Latent Forms of TB (LTBI) and Multi Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) and with the high prevalence of tuberculosis in immuno-compromised patients, there is an urgent need for the rapid development and advancement in the diagnostic tools. The sensitivity and specificity of commonly used diagnostic test is limited. Further, it is very difficult to detect the infection at early stage in case of asymptomatic tuberculosis. Inaccurate diagnostic methods results in delayed management of tuberculosis and worsening of the condition. Hence newer strategies have been introduced for the rapid detection of tuberculosis so as to give the appropriate treatment at early stage and to prevent the associated complications. Thus, this article summarizes the recent advancement introduced in the diagnostic tools for the tuberculosis. This article also covers the recent updates which have been introduced for the early diagnosis of tuberculosis.

Keywords:  Diagnosis, advance techniques, tuberculosis.