NPR story on a huge advance in testing for tuberculosis, + the NEJM article published today

[highplainsdem]

The NPR story

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/29/nx-s1-5802789/tb-tuberculosis-rapid-test

supposedly links to the article in the New England Journal of Medicine, but their current link is wrong and goes to an error page at DOI. The correct link for the NEJM article is

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2509761

The incorrect link NPR has currently - possibly an AI error if they're using AI - is some sort of mashup of DOI and NEJM links, which they should correct.

Again, the NEJM link is correct.

As the NPR story explains, TB "is currently the world's deadliest infectious disease, killing more than a million people a year" but the standard test, with phlegm examined under a microscope, hasn't changed since the late 19th century. It requires phlegm, and "not everyone can produce phlegm easily, including children, the elderly and those weakened by disease."

But with some advances in testing because of Covid, there's now a new test, with the medical article about that published just today.

Again, from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/29/nx-s1-5802789/tb-tuberculosis-rapid-test

That desire was fulfilled last year when the Chinese company Pluslife announced a new tuberculosis test called the MiniDock MTB. It works by taking a sample of someone's phlegm or — if the patient is unable to produce phlegm — a mere tongue swab, heating and spinning it down, and then machine scanning it for DNA from the TB bacteria. It's faster than conventional tests and is portable, allowing health workers to use it in a wider variety of settings.

"It's cheaper than a microscope," says Cattamanchi, since swabs are easy to process. He explains that the device itself costs $300, and the fee per test is $3 to $4. "So it's more affordable, it's more accessible."

-snip-

"What we hope it means is that many more people will have access to high-quality TB testing," says Cattmanchi. That would help get people the care they urgently need while simultaneously reducing transmission of the bacterial disease.

"To have this low-cost option is, I think, really going to help countries scale up," he adds.

Much more at that NPR link.

And from NEJM:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2509761

Tuberculosis remains a leading cause of infectious disease–related death worldwide, making timely diagnosis essential for effective treatment and control.1 However, access to rapid, accurate, and user-friendly diagnostics at or near the point of care is still limited in many locations where the disease burden is high.

MTB Nucleic Acid Test Card (MiniDock MTB, Guangzhou Pluslife Biotech) is a qualitative molecular test designed for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex with the Pluslife Integrated Nucleic Acid Testing Device (MiniDock PM001 Ultra), a low-cost, portable, battery-operable isothermal platform. The test uses RNase hybridization–assisted amplification, which combines loop-mediated isothermal amplification with RNase HII–mediated signal detection in a single reaction that produces visible results in 12 to 25 minutes. It targets conserved regions of the insertion sequence IS6110 and the gene gyrB and includes an internal control to verify sample adequacy and amplification integrity. Sample preparation is performed with Pluslife Thermolyse, which combines automated bead-beating–based mechanical lysis (3000 rpm) and thermal lysis (75°C for 5 minutes) to process sputum (from a swab swirled in sputum) or tongue-swab samples. In a multicenter pilot study, a prototype test showed sensitivity of 89.9% (95% confidence interval [CI], 80.2 to 95.8) with sputum and 85.7% (95% CI, 75.3 to 92.9) with tongue swabs, with greater than 98% specificity for both. These results exceeded World Health Organization (WHO) target product profile criteria for minimum accuracy with respect to near-point-of-care tuberculosis diagnostics, which require at least 85% sensitivity for sputum samples and 75% for nonsputum samples and 98% specificity for both.2,3

-snip-

In this multinational study, the MiniDock MTB test showed diagnostic accuracy that was consistent with the WHO target product profile for near-point-of-care tuberculosis diagnostics that use sputum and tongue-swab specimens.3 In addition to showing robust performance, the test was rated as being easy to use, with high usability scores that indicate it can be operated with minimal training. These findings support the feasibility of implementing MiniDock MTB as a flexible, user-friendly diagnostic option that performs similarly to or better than established tuberculosis diagnostic tests, allows for noninvasive sampling, and facilitates universal access to molecular tuberculosis testing.

-snip-

This study was partly funded by NIH and the State Department, though funding also came from Germany, the UK, India and the Gates Foundation. The NIH and State Department grants were mentioned first, so that might have been most of the funding. The study started in 2024, during the Biden administration. I suspect the Trump regime would have been much less likely to fund a study of TB patients in India, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia. Especially testing a Chinese device. I'm very glad they got the funding before Trump got back in the White House and turned DOGE loose.