Why detect LAM antigen and not LAM antibodies?
Studies have shown that the use of LAM antibodies in the detection of active Mycobacterium tuberculosis can lead to inaccurate and misleading results.5 Detection of LAM antibodies also poses a challenge in those patients where the immune response has been compromised, such as in those TB patients co-infected with HIV. In contrast, detection of LAM antigen provides a Mycobacterium specific target and is readily detectable in patients co-infected with TB-HIV.
