Point-of-care TB diagnosis may lead to faster treatment

Performing a molecular test for tuberculosis during a patient visit to a rural clinic in South Africa, rather than performing the test at a centralised laboratory, greatly reduced the time to treatment for patients who did not have a drug-resistant form of the disease.  This is according to the findings of a randomised, controlled trial published online in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.