“…As such, the following methods are currently being used to search fornew TB biomarkers: cytokine array analyses of the sera from patients with active or latent TB infections compared to those from healthy individuals (Weiner et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2013); microarray analyses of the supernatants of centrifuged peripheral blood after stimulation with TB-specific antigens from patients with active or latent TB infections compared to that from healthy individuals (Frahm et al, 2011;Kellar et al, 2011;Murthy et al, 2011;Borgstrom et al, 2012;Skogstrand et al, 2012;Anbarasu et al, 2013;Armand et al, 2014;Essone et al, 2014); and extraction and culture of leukocytes from the peripheral blood of patients with active or latent TB infection and healthy individuals, followed by analysis of the differences insecreted cytokines before and after stimulation with TB-specific antigens (Rivera-Ordaz et al, 2012). However, consistent results have not been obtained using the aforementioned methods because the number of cytokines analyzed is often small and the types of assays usedto detect them vary between studies; thus, a more systematic approach for analyzing all cytokines is needed.…”