Innovative Approaches to Tuberculosis Screening and Diagnosis
A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 14
Special Issue Editors
Interests: tuberculosis; public health
Interests: tuberculosis; informatics; surveillance; monitoring; drug-resistant TB
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Screening and diagnosis play a critical role in the prevention and care of tuberculosis (TB), which remains one of the major communicable diseases of global public health importance (11 million new TB patients per year) and the single leading cause of death from an infectious agent worldwide (1.5 million TB deaths annually). Each year close to three million TB patients go undiagnosed or unreported, presenting a challenge to many countries to reduce their TB burden.
After many decades of stagnation in the technologies used to screen, detect and confirm TB, the last 15 years have seen an encouraging expansion in new TB diagnostics appearing on the market. These include molecular and other rapid biomarkers that can be used on a variety of biological specimens; interferon gamma release assays for the detection of TB infection; and low-radiation ultraportable equipment, bringing chest X-ray within reach of more populations. The application of artificial intelligence to interpret chest X-ray imaging and the signatures of cough and stethoscope sounds for TB is another promising frontier that is already being operationalized and scaled up in low-resource, high-burden settings. These developments have been matched by new treatments and care for drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB and TB preventive treatment (TPT). The World Health Organization helps countries implement diagnostics of proven accuracy, guides manufacturers to develop technologies that better address the needs of users, and helps shape the research agenda.
As Guest Editors on this Special Issue, we invite leading researchers to contribute studies on new approaches for TB screening and diagnosis. A collection of articles with a broad scope of research will allow readers to appreciate the dynamic nature of screening and diagnostics for TB. The contributions being targeted will include, amongst others, research related to molecular diagnostics, the clinical chemistry of biomarkers, immunology, imaging, analysis of chest sounds and computer-aided detection employing artificial intelligence. We also encourage reports on the implementation of innovations, such as the cost-effectiveness of different testing strategies and information systems and field studies on the feasibility, accessibility, end-user values and equity and linkage to care of innovative approaches to the screening and diagnosis of TB disease, TB infection or post-TB impairments. We look forward to hearing from you.
Dr. Nguyen Nhat Linh
Dr. Dennis Falzon
Dr. Alexei Korobitsyn
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diagnostics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- tuberculosis
- diagnosis
- screening
- genomics
- biomarkers
- artificial intelligence
- linkage to care
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