Gupta RK, Turner CT, Venturini C, et al. - Researchers compared the performance of systematically identified candidate signatures for incipient tuberculosis via performing a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis. In addition they sought to benchmark these signatures against WHO targets Searching Medline and Embase, they identified 17 candidate mRNA signatures in a pooled dataset from four eligible studies comprising 1,126 samples. One hundred eighty-three samples from 127 incipient tuberculosis cases in South Africa, Ethiopia, The Gambia, and the UK comprised the dataset. For incipient tuberculosis over a 2-year period, they identified equivalent diagnostic accuracy of eight signatures (comprising 1–25 transcripts) that predominantly reflect interferon and tumor necrosis factor-inducible gene expression; areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves ranged from 0·70 to 0·77 for these signatures. Findings suggest that blood transcriptional biomarkers are indicative of short-term risk of tuberculosis; these biomarkers only exceed WHO benchmarks if applied to 3–6-month intervals. For optimal implementation of these biomarkers, there may be a requirement for serial testing among carefully selected target groups.