ArticlePloS one2015
Evaluation of Giant African Pouched Rats for Detection of Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Patients from a High-Endemic Setting.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Rats sniff out pulmonary tuberculosis from sputum: a diagnostic accuracy meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2021Pooled it
- Remote Medical Scent Detection of Cancer and Infectious Diseases With Dogs and Rats: A Systematic Review.Integrative cancer therapiesPooled it
- Machine Learning for Prediction of Tuberculosis Detection: Case Study of Trained African Giant Pouched Rats.Online journal of public health informatics · 2024Article
- Breath can discriminate tuberculosis from other lower respiratory illness in children.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Visual Analytics of Tuberculosis Detection Rat Performance.Online journal of public health informatics · 2021Article
- The Many Hosts of Mycobacteria 8 (MHM8): A conference report.Tuberculosis (Edinburgh, Scotland) · 2020Review
- Pediatric tuberculosis detection using trained African giant pouched rats.Pediatric research · 2018Article
- Reproducibility of African giant pouched rats detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis.BMC infectious diseases · 2017Article
- Tuberculosis diagnostic technology: an African solution … think rats.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2017Article
- Rapid Diagnosis of Tuberculosis from Analysis of Urine Volatile Organic Compounds.ACS sensors · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThis study established evidence about the diagnostic performance of trained giant African pouched rats for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum of well-characterised patients with presumptive tuberculosis (TB) in a high-burden setting.
methodsThe TB detection rats were evaluated using sputum samples of patients with presumptive TB enrolled in two prospective cohort studies in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. The patients were characterised by sputum smear microscopy and culture, including subsequent antigen or molecular confirmation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and by clinical data at enrolment and for at least 5-months of follow-up to determine the reference standard. Seven trained giant African pouched rats were used for the detection of TB in the sputum samples after shipment to the APOPO project in Morogoro, Tanzania.
resultsOf 469 eligible patients, 109 (23.2%) were culture-positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and 128 (27.3%) were non-TB controls with sustained recovery after 5 months without anti-TB treatment. The HIV prevalence was 46%. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the seven rats for the detection of culture-positive pulmonary tuberculosis was 0.72 (95% CI 0.66-0.78). An optimal threshold could be defined at ≥ 2 indications by rats in either sample with a corresponding sensitivity of 56.9% (95% CI 47.0-66.3), specificity of 80.5% (95% CI 72.5-86.9), positive and negative predictive value of 71.3% (95% CI 60.6-80.5) and 68.7% (95% CI 60.6-76.0), and an accuracy for TB diagnosis of 69.6%. The diagnostic performance was negatively influenced by low burden of bacilli, and independent of the HIV status.
conclusionGiant African pouched rats have potential for detection of tuberculosis in sputum samples. However, the diagnostic performance characteristics of TB detection rats do not currently meet the requirements for high-priority, rapid sputum-based TB diagnostics as defined by the World Health Organization.
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