Emelia Afif, Taufik, Irvan Medison

Abstract
Background : The diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis is still become a great problem, because the majority of pulmonary
tuberculosis diagnosis is established with negative AFB smears. A number of new methods has been developed to establish the
diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis which one of them is serologic test. The aim of this study was to compare the level of ESAT-6
Antibody between pulmonary tuberculosis patients and control subject group.

Methods : We performed case control study to analyze fifty patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and fifty control subjects that had
conducted from March 2011 to June 2011 at pulmonary clinic Dr. M. Djamil Hospital Padang and BP4 in Lubuk Alung Padang
Pariaman.

Results : We found the high level of ESAT-6 Antibody in pulmonary tuberculosis patients with mean value 0.0106 (0.023-0.790), but
instead we found the low level of ESAT-6 Antibody in control subject with mean value 0.021 (0.009-0.034). Statistically, these
differences was significant with p<0.001 and the cut-off point value 0.063. We did not find significant relationship between the level of
ESAT-6 Antibody with age, IMT and radiologic finding.

Conclusion : The level of ESAT-6 Antibody is higher in lung tuberculosis patients than control subject group, with the cut-off point
value of 0.063. (J Respir Indo. 2013; 33:17-25)

Keywords : ESAT-6 Antibody, lung tuberculosis.

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