The Optimist Daily · 20 hours ago

The New Tb Diagnostic That Could Replace 150 Years of Microscope Testing | the Optimist Daily

For 150 years, tuberculosis diagnosis has relied on a microscope examining phlegm-a test that misses half of all cases and leaves many patients, especially children and the elderly, unable to be tested at all. A new portable device costing $300 can now detect TB from a simple tongue swab in settings where patients once traveled to three, four, five health centers before finding one with testing available. "My hope honestly is that after more than 150 years, we finally get rid of using a microscope," says pulmonologist Adithya Cattamanchi, who co-authored a study validating the test across seven countries. The breakthrough carries a quiet irony: it took the urgency of COVID to funnel research into swab-based diagnostics that TB, a disease killing over a million people annually, had been waiting generations to receive.