Diagnosing Tuberculosis

There are a number of diagnostic tests used to find out whether a person has been infected with tuberculosis at some point, meaning they may have a latent case of the disease or may have cured themselves, or whether they currently have the active disease. The nature of tuberculosis, its ability to lay dormant within the body for years, means that determining that a person has been infected with tuberculosis is not enough to know whether they are presently capable of transmitting the disease. Multiple types of tests are often required to accurately diagnose cases of tuberculosis.

Past exposure to tuberculosis, and the current possibility of either latent or active TB, is indicated by skin and blood tests that measure the body's immune response to TB antigens. These tests indicate only that an individual has once had the TB bacteria in their system, not whether the disease is still present. They are useful insofar as a negative result is a fairly accurate indicator that the individual does not have TB. A positive result requires further diagnosis to conclusively identify whether it is a case of active or latent TB.

Active tuberculosis is suggested by presentation of the signs and symptoms of TB, as well as by tests that seek to find tuberculosis bacteria in sputum. Though such tests have taken weeks to conduct in the past, making them an imperfect diagnostic tool, new technologies have made the process of identifying Mycobacterium tuberculosis move much more quickly.

Click on any of the following diagnostic methods to open a picture gallery and learn more about how the test works.

Testing for Latent Infection

Mantoux Skin Test (tuberculin)
Blood Test / Interferon Gamma Release Assay

Testing for Active Disease

Symptoms
Chest x-ray
Smear microscopy (sputum examination)
cultures
Molecular analysis – GeneXpert MTB/RIF