Prospective use of soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor to screen TB co-infected with HIV patient among TB patient

Background: Tuberculosis patient who co infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) belong to the patient group at high risk for multi-drug resistant TB (TB-MDR). Early recognition is very important to reduce the number of TB/HIV co-infection cases. Soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) is considered to be a strong biomarker in HIV as well as TB patients. Aim: This study was carried out to evaluate whether suPAR could be used as a biomarker to identify the TB/HIV patients among pulmonary TB-patient. Patients and methods: We used a cross-sectional study design, in which registered patients were grouped into 3 categories: TB/HIV (n = 15), pulmonary TB-AFB(+) (n = 15), and healthy controls (n = 10). Plasma suPAR levels were measured using ELISA kit. A sputum culture and drug susceptibility test were performed for each patient. Results: suPAR levels in the TB/HIV group (15.26 ng/mL) were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than those in the TB-AFB (+) group (7.75 ng/mL) and the healthy control group (1.76 ng/mL). Conclusion: Plasma suPAR level of TB patients co-infected with HIV showed significantly difference from that of TB-AFB(+) patients suggested its potential to screen the TB/HIV among pulmonary TB-AFB(+) patients