New findings on the support and barriers to combat TB in high-burden countries
Nine out of ten cases of tuberculosis appear in 30 identified low and middle-income countries, each of which has a national tuberculosis programme. The managers of these programmes agree that it is important to screen for tuberculosis outside of health facilities. However, each screening programme must have its own well-considered, sustainable strategy and sufficient resources for it to be meaningful - which is not always the case today. This is one conclusion drawn by Olivia Biermann s forthcoming thesis.
At a global level, tuberculosis (TB) is still one of the deadliest infection diseases, affecting an estimated 10 million people every year, primarily people living in poverty in low and middle-income countries. Roughly 90 percent of cases occur in 30 identified countries, including India, Vietnam and South Africa. However, nearly a third of those infected - 2.9 million people - receive neither a diagno
Designing effective multidrug-resistant-TB treatments based on DNA sequencing
Globally, tuberculosis is the most common bacterial infectious disease leading to death. The pathogen causing tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has a number of peculiarities. One is that it is growing very slowly. While other typical pathogens, such as pneumococcal and pseudomonads, can already be identified by their growth in the microbiological laboratory in the first 72 hours, several weeks usually pass before tuberculosis bacteria grow in the lab. Thus it often takes one to two months before the efficacy of individual medicines can be tested.
However, these efficacy tests are essential for the effective treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is becoming increasingly common. In these cases, the pathogen has become resistant, i.e. insensitive, to the best tuberculosis drugs, rifampicin and isoniazid. This is due to changes in the genome, so-called mutations, which almost a
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Actor Patralekhaa who recently lost her father Ajit Paul, took to her social media handles to share a long letter to her late father which has been penned by her. Thanking him for saving her life when Patralekhaa was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 19, the letter mentioned several things about their adorable daughter-father relationship.
Talking about paying the last tribute, she revealed that although she’s good at final goodbye, she doesn’t know how to do the same for her darling papa. While the demise of her father has brought her down to her knees, a grieving Patralekhaa wrote to him, “Please, pick me up. I need you. I always will.”
Author summary Why was this study done? Though cited in many countries’ national guidance, the evidence that individuals with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) are rendered non-infectious by 2 weeks of effective TB treatment is challenged. This systematic review was commissioned by the World Health Organization to provide evidence to inform TB infection prevention and control guidelines. We sought to synthesise the available data on the clearance of potentially infectious TB bacteria from the sputum of patients after starting effective treatment. What did the researchers do and find? We performed systematic searches of literature databases to identify relevant articles, using predetermined inclusion criteria. Extracted data were synthesised using narrative summaries and meta-analyses. A minority of patients had clearance of TB bacteria from sputum at 2 weeks of effective treatment, as assessed by either sputum smear or culture. As expected, the proportion having cleared TB bacter