Finger-prick blood test may spot active tuberculosis early and predict who develops disease

Household contacts of people with tuberculosis (TB) have a high risk of getting TB themselves, at around 2%. It is currently difficult to detect TB in its early stages, or predict who will go on to have TB, and therefore preventive treatment is not widely used. Most contacts are asymptomatic and current approaches rely mainly on symptom-based screening and sputum testing, which often miss early or hidden disease. As a result, many infections are only identified once the disease has progressed.