About the Authors

Anna H. van’t Hoog

a.h.vanthoog@aighd.org

Affiliations Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Department of Global Health, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Frank Cobelens

Affiliations Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Department of Global Health, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Anna Vassall

Affiliation Social and Mathematical Epidemiology Group (SAME), Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

Sanne van Kampen

Affiliation KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands

Susan E. Dorman

Affiliation Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

David Alland

Affiliation New Jersey Medical School-UMDNJ, Department of Medicine, Newark, New Jersey, United States of America

Jerrold Ellner

Affiliation Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors AvH, AV, SvK, SD and JE have declared that no competing interests exist. The authors have read the journal's policy and declare possible conflicts for the authors DA and FC: DA receives royalties from licensing fees from the UMDNJ molecular beacon patent pool. Cepheid, which manufactures the Xpert test pays UMDNJ licensing fees for the molecular beacons used in the test. This conflict has been managed as follows: DA has irrevocably limited the amount of money that he can personally receive from Cepheid license payments to $4,999 per year. DA served as an ad-hoc unpaid member of the Cepheid advisory board in 2010. Cepheid did not pay for any expenses, including no payment for travel, meals, honorarium etc to DA or his laboratory. DA's laboratory received a $20,000 research grant from Cepheid in 2010 to perform a blinded study of clinical samples using the Xpert assay. DA no longer accepts research grants from Cepheid. FC serves as a consultant for the Foundation of Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: FC JE. Performed the experiments: AvtH. Analyzed the data: AvtH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AV SvK FC. Wrote the paper: AvtH FC AV SvK SD DA JE.