ObjectiveTo systematically review the diagnostic value of T-SPOT.TB and QuantiFERON-TB (QFT-GIT/QFT-Plus) in active tuberculosis (ATB). MethodsThe PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, EMbase, CNKI, WanFang Data, and CBM databases were electronically searched to collect diagnostic accuracy studies comparing QFT-GIT/QFT-Plus and T-SPOT.TB for diagnosing ATB from inception to February 8, 2022. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies, then, meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 16.0 software. ResultsA total of 20 studies were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that the pooled sensitivity of T-SPOT.TB and QFT-GIT were 0.89 (95%CI 0.85 to 0.92) and 0.84 (95%CI 0.79 to 0.89), the pooled specificity were 0.85 (95%CI 0.68 to 0.93) and 0.86 (95%CI 0.72 to 0.94), the area under the curve (AUC) of summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) were 0.93 (95%CI 0.84 to 0.97) and 0.90 (95%CI 0.56 to 0.99), respectively. The pooled sensitivity of T-SPOT.TB and QFT-Plus were 0.93 (95%CI 0.81 to 0.97) and 0.93 (95%CI 0.89 to 0.96), specificity were 0.99 (95%CI 0.39 to 1.00) and 0.94 (95%CI 0.67 to 0.99), the AUC of SROC were 0.99 (95%CI 0.67 to 1.00) and 0.98 (95%CI 0.65 to 1.00), respectively. ConclusionBoth T-SPOT.TB and QFT have high diagnostic accuracy for ATB, and the diagnostic sensitivity of T-SPOT.TB is better than QFT-GIT. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.
