Products / Tuberculosis

More than one third of the world’s population is infected with the TB bacillus, two billion people out of a total of six billion. No other infectious disease is so rampant. On a worldwide basis, the number of new cases of tuberculosis is calculated by the World Economic Forum at forty million annually.

Most of these cases are "latent" tuberculosis, which means the person is carrying a positive TB strain but it is "dormant" and therefore not contagious. Tuberculosis becomes contagious when a person with latent TB becomes an active carrier. There are 20,000 new cases of active TB every day, totaling over 7 million annually

Over two million people die from tuberculosis every year, ninety-eight percent of those in developing countries, which bear ninety percent of the world's TB burden. Tuberculosis is the number one killer of women of childbearing age worldwide.

Tuberculosis, the leading killer of HIV-positive people globally, accounts for eleven percent of AIDS deaths. Therefore, HIV and TB form a lethal co-infection combination, each speeding the other's progress. While the co-infection rates vary throughout the world, in some African countries the number of tuberculosis patients who are HIV-positive is perceived to be as high as seventy percent.

Hema Diagnostic Systems has developed a unique ELISA (microplate) assay for tuberculosis, based on proprietary and patented antigens which are part of the A-B-C series of antigens. The assay detects IgG antibodies, but is unique in that the Company has included an opportunity for the user / operator to choose how to optimize the performance of the kit to operate at maximum specificity (as a potential rule-out test for tuberculosis) or maximum sensitivity (to identify the maximum number of potentially positive TB patients).

This is done by incorporating two standards (a "sensitivity standard" and a "specificity standard") instead of the usual single standard. Patient samples can then be related to either one of the two standards provided in the kit depending upon the clinical situation in which the kit is to be used.

A rapid diagnostic test, using the same proprietary antigens is under research and development and should be ready for market early next year.