Introduction: Tuberculosis has shown to be a great challenge in kidney transplantation, specially in developing countries due to the difficulties in diagnosis and treatment, leading to elevated morbidity and mortality. In a previous epidemiological study in our Center, it became clear that the incidence of tuberculosis is increasing in the last few years (2.5% from 2000-2004, 3.6 from 2005-2009, and 3.8% from 2010-2012). Since we work in a high burden area, one of our hypothesis was that we were missing latent tuberculosis (LT) diagnosis when using history, tuberculin test (TT) and chest radiograms, and therefore not treating it effectively. Objective: to present the preliminary results with the use of interferon-gama release assays (Quantiferon® TB-Gold In-Tube) as an additional tool in the diagnosis of LT infection prior to kidney transplantation (KT), both in recipients and living donors. Results: in 5 months, we performed 107 adult KT, and collected 86 samples of the test (60 recipients and 26 living donors). Using our standard evaluation, 7 patients would receive LT treatment (2 for previous history, 1 for positive TT, 4 for donors' positive TT), comprising 11% of our sample. Using Igra, we recommended treatment to 19 patients, one third of our sample (13 positive recipients' tests and 7 positive donors' tests). When comparing to our previous study results there was an increase in the indication of LT treatment, from 12.5% to 31%. Conclusion: there is evidence that using Igra in the diagnosis of LT infection prior to KT increases the number of LT treatment recommendations. The follow-up period will help us verify if that modification in our evaluation can impact the incidence of active disease after transplantation.

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