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Report says test more foreign-born residents for TB

Infection Control Monitor, January 5, 2007

Current guidelines should be changed to reclassify all foreign-born residents from high-incidence countries as "high-risk" for tuberculosis (TB), regardless of the amount of time they have lived in the United States, a new report recommends.

The findings appear in the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society. Present guidelines recommend only those residing in the U.S. for five years or less be targeted for tuberculin skin testing and treatment of latent TB infection.

However, in 2004, a total of 14,517 cases of TB were reported and of those 24% were foreign-born persons who entered the U.S. more than five years previously, investigators reported.

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