Aplisol change may reduce TB false positives
Company removes latex from reagent packaging
Will a simple change in packaging improve the reading of a tuberculin screen?
That’s what the makers of Aplisol hope, as Parkdale Pharmaceuticals of Rochester, MI, began marketing its new latex-free product.
Some employee health and infection control professionals have expressed concern about false-positive screening tests related to Aplisol. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had found no difference between Aplisol and its competitor, Tubersol (Pasteur Merieux Connaught USA, Swiftwater, PA). (See Hospital Employee Health, September 2000, p. 105.)
However, redness around the injection site could be misinterpreted as a false positive, acknowledges Randy Hubbard, PhD, director of biotechnology development at Parkdale.
"If you get a reaction and you’re not expecting it, you want to call it a false positive," Hubbard points out.
"Red reactions have no diagnostic value," he says. "It’s only the induration, the hard swelling of the skin at the site of injection, that has diagnostic value. There is some lack of understanding of what a true reaction is."
Hubbard and others at Parkdale suspected that some health care workers may have reacted to the latex in the stopper.
The company also began to use steam to sterilize the stopper, rather than ethylene oxide, which also may cause reactions in highly sensitive individuals, he says. "We’re hoping any adverse-reaction complaints will decrease because of this change."
Tubersol has never used latex in its packaging, a company spokesman said.
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