Abstract:Objective To analyze the clinical significance of adenosine deaminase (ADA), TB-DNA, T-spot alone or combined detection in early diagnosis and prognosis prediction of tuberculous pleurisy (TBP). Methods Seventy-six patients with suspected TBP were selected from June 2016 to June 2018, retrospectively. 48 patients with TBP were diagnosed as TBP in patients with non-TBP pleurisy and 28 patients were selected in non-TBP group. The levels of adenosine deaminase (ADA), tuberculosis deoxyribonucleic acid (TB-DNA) and peripheral blood tuberculosis infected T cell spot test (T-spot) were detected and compared between the two groups. The diagnostic efficacy of separate detection and parallel combination diagnosis of three methods was analyzed. Results The ADA level in the TBP group was significantly higher than that in the non-TBP group. The TB-DNA and T-spot positive rates in the TBP group were also significantly higher than those in the non-TBP group (P?0.05). ADA and TB-DNA have higher specificity (85.71% and 96.43%), and the sensitivity of T-spot (81.25%) is higher than ADA and TB-DNA (P?0.05), and its specificity is lower than ADA and TB-DNA (71.42%) (P?0.05). The sensitivity of ADA+ T-spot and ADA+TB-DNA+ T-spot (87.50% VS. 91.67%) and negative predictive value (77.78% VS. 82.61%) were not significantly different (P?>?0.05), but were significantly higher than ADA+TB-DNA (68.75% and 62.50%) (P?< 0.05). The specificity of the ADA+TB-DNA group (89.29%) was significantly higher than that of the ADA+T-spot and ADA+TB-DNA+ T-spot groups (60.71% and 67.86%). The areas under the curve of TB-DNA+T-spot, ADA+T-spot and ADA+TB-DNA+T-spot were 0.666 (95% CI: 0.614, 0.879), 0.849 (95% CI: 0.802, 0.989) and 0.917 (95% CI: 0.831, 1.000). Conclusion ADA, TB-DNA and T-spot have their own characteristics. The sensitivity and specificity of T-spot are good, while ADA and TB-DNA are highly specific. Parallel combined detection of the three methods can improve the diagnosis sensitivity of TBP.