About the Authors

Benjamin Krummel

Contributed equally to this work with: Benjamin Krummel, Alan Strassburg

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Alan Strassburg

Contributed equally to this work with: Benjamin Krummel, Alan Strassburg

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Martin Ernst

Affiliation Division of Immune Cell Analytics, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Norbert Reiling

Affiliation Division of Microbial Interface Biology, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Barbara Eker

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Heidrun Rath

Affiliation TB Surveillance, Public Health Department, Lübeck, Germany

Robert Hoerster

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Waltraud Wappler

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Andrea Glaewe

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Volker Schoellhorn

Affiliation Autoimmun Diagnostika GmbH, Straßberg, Germany

Giovanni Sotgiu

Affiliation Hygiene and Preventive Medicine Institute, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy

Christoph Lange

clange@fz-borstel.de

Affiliation Division of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany

Competing Interests

ELISPOT plates and reagents were kindly provided free of charge by Autoimmun Diagnostika (AID), Strasberg, Germany. One of the co-authors, V. Schoellhorn is the CEO of AID. However, AID does not hold any patents in the antigens used in this study (ESAT-6 or CFP-10 ). The affiliation of V. Schoellhorn with AID does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BK HR VS CL. Performed the experiments: BK ME NR BE HR RH WW AG CL. Analyzed the data: BK AS ME NR HR GS CL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ME NR VS. Wrote the paper: BK AS NR CL.