ArticleFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology2022
Selection of the cutoff value of the tuberculin skin test for diagnosing students who need preventive treatment: A school-based cross-sectional study.
Article in Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Responding to a protracted tuberculosis outbreak: lessons from multiple rounds of investigation in a Chinese boarding school.Annals of medicine · 2026Article
- Advancement in diagnostic approaches for latent tuberculosis: distinguishing recent from remote infections.One health outlook · 2025Review
- Advances in the Diagnosis of Latent Tuberculosis Infection.Infection and drug resistance · 2025Review
- Epidemiological Characteristics and Spatiotemporal Clustering of Pulmonary Tuberculosis Among Students in Southwest China From 2016 to 2022: Analysis of Population-Based Surveillance Data.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Tuberculin skin testing and QuantiFERON™-TB Gold Plus positivity among household contacts in Vietnam.Public health action · 2023Article
- Diagnostic performance of a novel ESAT6-CFP10 skin test for tuberculosis infection in school tuberculosis outbreak in China.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Article
- Positive rate and risk factors of latent tuberculosis infection among persons living with HIV in Jiangsu Province, China.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Tuberculosis outbreaks in schools are common in China. This study aimed to introduce and evaluate a new screening process to help control outbreaks. Methods: Screening information of students in three schools with tuberculosis outbreaks was collected. QuantiFERON-TB gold in-tube (QFT) results were used as the reference standard to determine the cutoff value of the tuberculin skin test (TST) for diagnosing students who need to have preventive medication. Results: A total of 1,232 students and teachers from three different schools that all had more than three student patients with tuberculosis were included in this study. In total, 308 (25.0%) students had an induration diameter ≥10 mm; among students in a class different from the index case, the infection rate was 24.4% (264/1,084), which was lower than the rate among students in the same class (29.7%) (P = 0.157). Students in the same class as the index tuberculosis case had a much higher QFT positivity compared to those in a different class (58.1% vs. 7.7%, P < 0.0001). Diagnostic agreement between TST ≥10 mm and QFT was 36.6%. The diagnostic value reached the highest when the induration diameter of TST was ≥9 mm, with a sensitivity and specificity of 94.1% (95% CI: 89.4%-97.1%) and 27.6% (95% CI: 24.9%-30.4%), respectively. The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.664 (95% CI: 0.637-0.690, P < 0.0001). Conclusion: In tuberculosis outbreaks in schools, if there are three or more cases of students with tuberculosis in a class or if the moderate or strong TST positivity rate is much higher than the normal range in the region, attention should be paid to those with moderately positive TST results. Interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) are recommended to be conducted following TST on the day of reading the results, especially among students sharing the same class with the index case. In resource-poor areas lacking IGRAs, the induration diameter of TST can be appropriately reduced from 15 to 9 mm to enhance the sensitivity of TST.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.