The Mantoux test or Mendel-Mantoux test (also known as the Mantoux screening test, tuberculin sensitivity test, Pirquet test, or PPD test for purified protein derivative) is a screening tool for tuberculosis (TB). It is one of the major tuberculin skin tests used around the world, largely replacing multiple-puncture tests such as the Tine test. The Heaf test was used until 2005 in the UK, when it was replaced by the Mantoux test. It is endorsed by the American Thoracic Society and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was also used in the USSR and is now prevalent in most of the former Soviet states.

History

Tuberculin is a glycerol extract of the tubercle bacillus. Purified protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin is a precipitate of species-nonspecific molecules obtained from filtrates of sterilized, concentrated cultures. The tuberculin reaction was first described by Robert Koch in 1890. The test was first developed and described by the German physician Felix Mendel in 1908 It is named after Charles Mantoux, a French physician who built on the work of Koch and Clemens von Pirquet to create his test in 1907. However, the test was unreliable due to impurities in tuberculin which tended to cause false results.