I had a positive skin test and took the medication for 9 months and it wasnt a big deal I had no side effects from it which was good

When I was negative for TB, I would get a TB test (in elementary school) and it would go away by the third day and you couldn't even tell I had a test. In fact, they usually circle it so they know where it is. I don't know if they are using another form of the test, but the nurse drew lines to my son's test and didn't draw them through it at all but stopped at the edge and measured it. She claimed it was negative though it looked quite positive to me. He also got it worse later. I don't know if they are using different stuff now that causes redness, but that would be stupid since what you are looking for is redness---an immune response. How do they know what component of the shot is causing the redness. The sad thing is that many nurses with large red swollen reactions are continuing to treat patients, believing that they are negative but we don't know for sure.

I know that among all the children for years of TB tests, we all did not get any redness and you couldn't tell where the shot had been given. In fact, my boyfriend had one recently and they circled it and if they hadn't, you wouldn't have known where it was given. Apparently alot of people are "allergic" to the ppd test and get redness and swelling that resembles identically a positive result, but which nurses or their assistants feel are actually negative. And once they note the redness down, if you are positive, it will be harder to get someone to actually go ahead and give you the positive reading.

Redness is clearly a sign of an immune response. How do they know what you are responding to? One nurse claimed this redness was a reaction to the liquid the bacterium are mixed with, but it would be simple to test that by giving a second shot of just the liquid with no bacterium in it to confirm which the person is reacting to. In fact, it is a guess on the part of the nurses who were discussing it.

The point is that the tuberculin reacts with the disease present in you body already and builds up an area of induration. that being said, whether the site is red as a fire truck or white as the driven snow, it's the induration (solidness like an eraser under the skin) that determines the positiveness of the result.

Currently (2008 and 09) your TB history, likelihood of exposure and size of that induration are all taken into account when determining whether a result is positive or not.

I am writing this as a nurse who just recently had a positive skin test, negative x-ray, and a positive quantiferon gold test. currently I am waiting for my local health department to make a recommendation for or against treatment based on my history and likelihood of exposure.

Well, they seemed unclear what the induration was with regard to my son. With me, and what I was taught as a medical assistant, it was a red raised area with an edge around it, the thickness of a coin about the size of a quarter and then the tissue underneath was a big swollen lump. They took a card and rubbed up to the edges of the raised area and marked it and measured it and said it was positive.

My son had the same reaction, though his arm was really swollen more, probably because I was pregnant with him whe I had TB. Anyway, they squeezed the underlying swolled tissue and claimed that because there was no hardness there, despite the raisd area about the thickness of a coin, they marked him negative. One nurse clearly felt it was a positive but wouldn't go againtst the doctor. The health dept ran a card up to the edges of the raised part and marked it and the size but still called it a negative. It took over three weeks for my son's reaction to go away. Both me and my sister have had active TB. I was dx during my son's prenatal and no tx given either of us. I really feel this tst was misread, especially since they injected so close to the top layer of the skin, as they are suppposed to.

its like youve been bitten by a spider or mosquito.. you get a big eound redish thing on your arm, its hard and if ur positive its supposed to be like more than 7mm. your negative if its lless than that...