| It is generally known that tuberculosis(TB) is very ancient, and is one of the major infectious diseases, which threaten the human health. Our country is one of the high TB burden countries. According to the network data, the morbidity and mortality of pulmonary tuberculosis are among the two Class-AB infectious disease in our Country all the time. Because the protective effect of TB vaccine—bacille Calmette-Guérin(BCG) is limited, the global tuberculosis epidemic control is still difficult, along with the increasing morbidity of drug-resistant TB and acquired immune deficiency syndrome(AIDS).TB most spreads through the respiratory tract, transmitted by droplets, latent TB infection(LTBI) is not contagious, but maybe turn into active tuberculosis and have an increased risk of infection if immunologic function declines. The most commonly used diagnosis of tuberculosis infection at present are interferon gamma release assay(IGRA) and tuberculin skin test(TST),but they can not differentiate between active and latent tuberculosis. Many researchers have been trying to find a simple, rapid, high sensitivity, and cheap immunological diagnostic tool to identify and discriminate tuberculosis. Recently, the research on immunological diagnosis based on the gamma interferon(IFN-gamma) has made much exciting progress, interferon-inducible protein 10(IP-10) is one kind of chemokines, which is associated with TB immune response, may serve as a diagnostic biomarker to differentiate between the stages of TB infection and for monitoring therapy efficacy. This paper mainly reviewes the value of IP-10 in mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, including the background, expression feature, differential diagnosis, assessment of therapeutic effect, prospect, so as to guide the clinical diagnosis, high risk group screening, and follow-up evaluation. |
