{"doi":"10.1093/cei/uxac049","title":"<i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i>antigen-specific T-cell responses in smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis patients","abstract":"Despite recent improvements in microbial detection, smear-negative TB remains a diagnostic challenge. In this study, we investigated the potential discriminatory role of polychromatic flow cytometry of M. tuberculosis antigen-specific T cells to discriminate smear-negative TB from health controls with or without latent TB infection, and non-TB respiratory illnesses in an endemic setting. A cross-sectional study was conducted on HIV negative, newly diagnosed smear-positive PTB (n = 34), smear-negative/GeneXpert negative PTB (n = 29) patients, non-TB patients with respiratory illness (n = 33) and apparently healthy latent TB infected (n = 30) or non-infected (n = 23) individuals. The expression of activation (HLA-DR, CD-38), proliferation (Ki-67), and functional (IFN-γ, TNF-α) T-cell markers using polychromatic flow cytometry was defined after stimulation with PPD antigens. Sputum samples were collected and processed from all patients for Mtb detection using a concentrated microscopy, LJ/MGIT culture, and RD9 typing by PCR. Our study showed CD4 T cells specific for PPD co-expressed activation/proliferation markers together with induced cytokines IFN-γ or TNF-α were present at substantially higher levels among patients with smear-positive and smear-negative pulmonary TB than among healthy controls and to a lesser extent among patients with non-TB illness. Our study conclude that smear-negative TB can be distinguished from non-TB respiratory illness and healthy controls with a flow cytometric assay for PPD-specific T cells co-expressing activation/proliferation markers and cytokines.","journal":"Clinical & Experimental Immunology","year":2022,"id":284942,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9575,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":309102,"name":"Tamrat Abebe","orcid":"0000-0002-6100-9303","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":947917,"name":"Adane Mihret","orcid":"0000-0003-3183-4772","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":930183,"name":"Daniel Mussa","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":963115,"name":"Sebsib Neway","orcid":"0000-0002-2033-5874","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":8685,"name":"J. Ernst","orcid":"0000-0001-9951-6207","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":280891,"name":"Jyothi Rengarajan","orcid":"0000-0003-1241-4705","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":487247,"name":"Liya Wassie","orcid":"0000-0002-5494-5275","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":754386,"name":"Rawleigh Howe","orcid":"0000-0002-4001-5456","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":947916,"name":"Ahmed Esmael","orcid":"0000-0002-0310-0280","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":32,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:29:40.826853Z","pmid":"35552657","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}