QIAGEN welcomes new U.S. Guidelines for Use Of Quantiferon-TB Gold Plus in Detecting Tuberculosis Infections In Children
● American Academy of Pediatrics in the United States now recommends IGRA tests like QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus to screen at-risk children of all ages
● New recommendation joins trend of U.S. tuberculosis control guidelines that emphasize use of modern blood-based tests to combat the spread of potentially deadly bacterial infection
Germantown, Maryland, and Venlo, the Netherlands– QIAGEN (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced that it welcomes new guidelines in the United States that recommend screening at-risk children of all ages for latent tuberculosis (TB) infection with modern blood-based tests such as QIAGEN’s market-leading QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus).
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The new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) emphasize testing for TB with modern interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs). The new standards were published in the academy’s Red Book: 2024–2027 Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases.
The new TB screening guidelines expand on the organization’s previous IGRA recommendations and now cover children of all ages, including infants and children age 2 and under.
Up to 13 million people in the U.S. are estimated to have latent TB infections, and children are at increased risk for progression from infection to contagious active TB disease. Children are also commonly exposed to settings with a higher risk for TB transmission, such as schools and childcare centers.
The AAP’s recommendations follow recently updated guidelines from the American College Health Association (ACHA) stating that IGRAs are preferred over the 120-year-old tuberculin skin test (TST) for most situations relevant to college health.
“I am pleased to see the American Academy of Pediatrics removing any age threshold for the use of IGRAs,” said Dr. Lindsay Cameron, an AAP member, pediatric infectious disease physician and pediatrician in Houston, Texas. “The new guidelines resonate with the growing recognition by TB control experts of the value of using the most accurate diagnostic tests available. As part of our comprehensive efforts to eradicate this life-threatening disease, latent TB infection can be detected in at-risk children and adolescents and treated to prevent progression into active and contagious TB disease.”
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