BACKGROUND: Many diagnostic tests have developed to diagnose tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases but the diagnosis of tuberculosis relies largely on radiological findings and acid-fast staining of sputum and/or culture. Recently, new serologic diagnostic methods, which are safe and easy to use have been introduced into Korea. In this study, the usefulness of serologic diagnosis for tuberculosis and the disease pattern induced variation of the test were evaluated. METHODS: Serological assay was performed upon 108 patients with two test kits, the ICT tuberculosis and the BioSign(TM) TB, which are based upon a rapid immunochromatographic assay technique, capable of being interpreted within 15 minutes. The case groups consisted of 61 patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis(36 patients), extrapulmonary tuberculosis(3 patients), or both (22 patients). Control groups consisted of 47 patients with inactive old pulmonary tuberculosis (17 patients), nontuberculous pulmonary disease(16 patients) and nonpulmonary cardiac disease(14 patients). RESULTS: The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of the ICT tuberculosis were 64.3%, 91.5%, 90.0% and 68.3% respectively. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of the BioSign(TM) TB were 76.5%, 95.3%, 94.1% and 78.8% respectively. Differences in sensitivity were not significant between patients with previous history of tuberculosis or patients without prior history of tuberculosis. The ICT tuberculosis test showed higher sensitivity in pulmonary tuberculosis patients (76.5%) than extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients (33.3%). There was no difference in sensitivity between patients with or without cavitary lesion by chest X-ray. CONCLUSION: Considering high specificity and PPV, serologic diagnosis using a rapid immunochromatographic assay device is another helpful diagnostic method in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, when combined with previous diagnostic methods such as chest X-ray, microbiologic study but it has limitation in terms of confirming the diagnosis for tuberculosis as the only diagnostic method because of relatively low sensitivity and NPV.