Immigrant screening misses majority of imported latent TB, finds study

Current UK procedures to screen new immigrants for tuberculosis (TB) fail to detect more than 70 per cent of cases of latent infection, according to a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. TB is caused by a bacterial infection which is normally asymptomatic, but around one in 10 infections leads to active disease, which attacks the lungs and kills around half of people affected. Today's research showed that better selection of which immigrants to screen with new blood tests can detect over 90 per cent of imported latent TB. These people can be given a course of antibiotic treatment to prevent them from developing the active form of the disease. This would reduce both the spread of the disease and the health costs of treating people with active TB. The incidence of TB has risen dramatically in Britain over the last decade, increasing by almost 50 per cent between 1998 and 2009. Much of this increase has been driven by a 98 per cent increase in cases among people who move to the country from overseas.