An evaluation of the tuberculosis agglutination test.
The tuberculosis agglutination titre as described by Nicholls (1975) was measured without prior knowledge of the diagnosis in 27 patients with open pulmonary tuberculosis, 100 patients with other diseases and 14 control patients with no apparent disease. Reproducibility of the test, as judged by repeat estimations on split samples, was poor. When attempting to distinguish between the disease categories the test gave 29% false negatives in patients with tuberculosis and 52% false positives in patients with other disease. Therefore the tuberculosis agglutination titre cannot be recommended for use in distinguishing tuberculosis from other conditions.
D000372:Agglutination Tests / Q000592:standards; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D006801:Humans; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000175:diagnosis*