Rapid urine-based screening for tuberculosis in HIV-positive patients admitted to hospital in Africa (STAMP): a pragmatic, multicentre, parallel-group, double-blind, randomised controlled trial

Publication date: Available online 20 July 2018Source: The LancetAuthor(s): Ankur Gupta-Wright, Elizabeth L Corbett, Joep J van Oosterhout, Douglas Wilson, Daniel Grint, Melanie Alufandika-Moyo, Jurgens A Peters, Lingstone Chiume, Clare Flach, Stephen D Lawn, Katherine FieldingSummaryBackgroundCurrent diagnostics for HIV-associated tuberculosis are suboptimal, with missed diagnoses contributing to high hospital mortality and approximately 374 000 annual HIV-positive deaths globally. Urine-based assays have a good diagnostic yield; therefore, we aimed to assess whether urine-based screening in HIV-positive inpatients for tuberculosis improved outcomes.MethodsWe did a pragmatic, multicentre, double-blind, randomised controlled trial in two hospitals in Malawi and South Africa. We included HIV-positive medical inpatients aged 18 years or more who were not taking tuberculosis treatment. We randomly assigned patients (1:1), using a computer-generated list of random block size stratified by site, to either the standard-of-care or the intervention screening group, irrespective of symptoms or clinical presentation. Attending clinicians made decisions about care; and patients, clinicians, and the study team were masked to the group allocation. In both groups, sputum was tested using the Xpert MTB/RIF assay (Xpert; Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA, USA). In the standard-of-care group, urine samples were not tested for tuberculosis. In the intervention group, urine was tested with the Alere Det...
Source: The Lancet - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research