Protocols

The Feasibility of Novel Diagnostics for TB in Endemic Countries (FEND for TB) Consortium, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is comprised of a group of international clinical and laboratory investigators with the primary purpose of supporting the evaluation of early-stage tuberculosis diagnostic assays and strategies in the context of existing clinical algorithms in tuberculosis endemic countries. FEND for TB conducts early-stage diagnostic accuracy and feasibility studies and feeds back findings to assay developers to facilitate the efficiency of the iterative assay evaluation and revision process. FEND for TB investigators and study teams enroll participants in high-burden tuberculosis settings, where across each of these settings there is a spectrum of Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug resistance, HIV prevalence, the prevalence of non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections, and adult co-morbidities (infectious and non-infectious) such that the set of study sites reasonably represents the global population of individuals undergoing