Phages specific for mycobacterial lipoarabinomannan help serodiagnosis of tuberculosis

Abstract

This study evaluated the possibility to use six phages specific to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis lipoarabinomannan (LAM) as tools for tubercular serodiagnosis. We analysed sera samples from 30 subjects with active tuberculosis (TB+), 30 with latent tubercular infection (LTBI) and 60 healthy subjects as controls (K). Our data indicated a good antibody response of the TB+ and LTBI patients against the phage Ri(7)17; the optical density (OD) values obtained from sera patients was statistically significant when compared to the control samples. Our results confirm that phage display technology might be useful to develop new tools for diagnosis of tuberculosis.