TY - JOUR T1 - Screening for latent tuberculosis before tumour necrosis factor antagonist therapy JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1510 LP - 1512 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00194314 VL - 45 IS - 5 AU - Richard J. Hewitt AU - Aran Singanayagam AU - Saranya Sridhar AU - Melissa Wickremasinghe AU - Onn Min Kon Y1 - 2015/05/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/45/5/1510.abstract N2 - We read with great interest the recent letter by Woodfield et al. [1]. The authors report a retrospective study evaluating the use of either an interferon-γ release assay (IGRA) result or a chest radiograph, alone, as a screening approach for identifying patients with latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI) before initiating tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α antagonist therapy. In this study, 353 IGRA-negative patients were commenced on TNF-α antagonists for a variety of inflammatory conditions without further LTBI assessment; one patient subsequently developed active TB. Reliance on interferon-γ release assays alone for screening before anti-TNF therapy may miss patients with latent TB http://ow.ly/JXx74 ER -