Rapid Diagnosis of Tuberculosis from Analysis of Urine Volatile Organic Compounds

The World Health Organization has called for simple, sensitive, and nonsputum diagnostics for tuberculosis. We report development of a urine tuberculosis test using a colorimetric sensor array (CSA). The sensor comprising 73 different indicators captures high-dimensional, spatiotemporal signatures of volatile chemicals emitted by human urine samples. The sensor responses to 63 urine samples collected from 22 tuberculosis cases and 41 symptomatic controls were measured under 5 different urine test conditions. Basified testing condition yielded the best accuracy with 85.5% sensitivity and 79.5% specificity. The CSA urine assay offers desired features needed for tuberculosis diagnosis in endemic settings.