The patients were randomly assigned to standard-of-care Xpert MTB/RIF sputum screening either alone or with the addition of the two urine-based screens already described.
The overall absolute difference in risk of death at 56 days was -2.8% favoring urine screening (P = .074). As noted, this difference was only significant among patients with CD4 counts below 100/uL. Among these patients, mortality rates for nonurine screened versus screened were 35.7% vs. 28.8%, respectively (P = .036).
Baseline hemoglobin below 8 g/dl and TB suspected at admission were also predictive of better outcomes with the addition of urine-based screening.
An analysis of time to death stratified by baseline CD4 cell count also showed the advantage of urine screening for the sickest patients, with an adjusted hazard ratio for patients with CD4 counts below 100 of 0.77 (P = .047).