The interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) release assay (IGRA) is a highly sensitive and specific method for detecting Mtb infection (Greveson et al., 2013), but it cannot distinguish latent from active infections efficiently (Lange et al., 2012; Targowski et al., 2014; Cho et al., 2016), despite it has been commonly used for the screening and clinical diagnosis of these two stages, respectively. Here, IFNG is linked to infection.