Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is the second leading cause of death by infectious disease after COVID-19 globally. The WHO estimates that in 2022 10.6 million people fell ill with TB and 1.3 million people died. Additionally, drug resistance in M. tuberculosis is an increasing problem¹.

Rapid, accurate and accessible diagnostics would allow improvements for triage and treatment of patients with TB. Current diagnostic tests rely largely on potentially hard-to-obtain sputum samples or have long turnaround times. Host-response blood-based diagnostics are a current area of interest.

TB-HIRA utilises an existing signature, RISK6 which meets the WHO target product profile performance for a TB triage test^2,3.

The signature measures the relative expression of six individual mRNA transcripts in a whole blood sample. An algorithm is then applied to generate a score indicative of TB infection status^2,3.

RISK6 has demonstrated potential clinical utility in monitoring the response to treatment without the need for culture, whilst also being suitable for use in children and people living with HIV³.

QuantuMDx is developing the TB-HIRA to support the global fight against the challenge of tuberculosis.

TB-HIRA comprises a single tube master-mix including all primers and reagents for quantification of transcripts measured during the RISK6 assay. This allows the relative expression of all six transcripts to be measured in a single multiplexed RT-qPCR reaction on a benchtop thermocycler.

Download our poster from the 2023 Union World Conference on Lung Health here.

QuantuMDx is working hard to develop a cassette-based TB-HIRA for the portable platform, Q-POC, so that TB diagnosis and treatment monitoring can be accessed at the Point of Need.