A modelling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that if efforts are not made to mitigate and overcome interruptions in health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500 000 extra deaths from AIDS-related …
A modelling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that if efforts are not made to mitigate and overcome interruptions in health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500 000 extra deaths from AIDS-related …
South Africa is one of the countries with the highest burden of tuberculosis (TB). According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics, 322,000 TB cases reported in South Africa in 2017. The highest TB incidence rates reported in Western Cape province in South Africa and reported rate was 938 per …
The bi-directional relationship between poverty and tuberculosis (TB) is well established. Poverty aggravates material disadvantage, social exclusion, discrimination in participation across a wide range of socio-economic and behavioural activities along with undernutrition, overcrowding, lack of access to healthcare and other social determinants of health. Original Source
Social network data of tuberculosis (TB) patients could explain the source and pattern of disease spread. A review of the published literature highlights that social network data could identify hidden social or epidemiological links among TB patients and improved TB case finding. Index and betweenness position of patients explained TB …
One of the first multicenter randomized trials was the British Medical Research Council (MRC) streptomycin trial. From the first meeting of the special committee to “plan trials of streptomycin in tuberculosis” in September, 1946, the primary trial results from 107 participants followed for 12 months were published in the British …
Of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB), <50% complete treatment. Most treatment failures for patients with MDR TB are due to death during TB treatment. We sought to determine the proportion of deaths during MDR TB treatment attributable to TB itself. We used a structured verbal autopsy tool to interview …
The objective of the study was to review policies on management of latent tuberculosis infection in countries with low and high burdens of tuberculosis. Original Source
The existing treatment regime against tuberculosis is not adequate, and novel therapeutic interventions are required to target Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) pathogenesis. We report Pranlukast (PRK) as a novel allosteric inhibitor of Mtb's arginine biosynthetic enzyme, Ornithine acetyltransferase (MtArgJ). PRK treatment remarkably abates the survival of free as well as macrophage‐internalized …
The tuberculosis vaccine bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) has heterologous beneficial effects against non-related infections. The basis of these effects has been poorly explored in humans. In a randomized placebo-controlled human challenge study, we found that BCG vaccination induced genome-wide epigenetic reprograming of monocytes and protected against experimental infection with an attenuated …
The risk of tuberculosis outbreaks among people fleeing hardship for refuge in Europe is heightened. We describe the cross-border European response to an outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis among patients from the Horn of Africa and Sudan. Original Source
An understanding of the trends in tuberculosis incidence, prevalence, and mortality is crucial to tracking of the success of tuberculosis control programmes and identification of remaining challenges. We assessed trends in the fatal and non-fatal burden of tuberculosis over the past 25 years for 195 countries and territories. Original Source
Recent in vitro and animal studies have found the proton pump inhibitor (PPI) lansoprazole to be highly active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Omeprazole and pantoprazole have no activity. There is no evidence that, in clinical practice, lansoprazole can treat or prevent incident tuberculosis (TB) disease. Original Source
The WHO Global Ministerial Conference “Ending TB in the Sustainable Development Era: A Multisectoral Response” aims to accelerate implementation of the WHO End TB Strategy - with immediate action addressing gaps in access to care and the MDR-TB crisis - in order to reach the End TB targets set by …
The objective of the study was to describe the secular trends for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR TB) and to identify unique characteristics of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB) in rural China. Original Source
Ambient air pollution and tuberculosis (TB) have an impact on public health worldwide, yet associations between the two remain uncertain. Researchers determined the impact of residential traffic on mortality during treatment of active TB. Original Source
The objective of the study was to investigate the impact of introducing a rapid test as the first-line diagnostic test for drug-sensitive tuberculosis in Cape Town, South Africa. Original Source
ideR, an essential gene of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is an attractive drug target as its conditional knockout displayed attenuated growth phenotype in vitro and in vivo. To the best of our knowledge, no inhibitors of IdeR are identified. We carried out virtual screening of NCI database against the IdeR DNA binding …
Prolonged treatment of tuberculosis (TB) often leads to poor compliance, default and relapse, converting primary TB patients into category II TB (Cat IITB) cases, many of whom may convert to multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). We have evaluated the immunotherapeutic potential of Mycobacterium indicus pranii (MIP) as an adjunct to Anti-Tubercular …
National levels of personal health-care access and quality can be approximated by measuring mortality rates from causes that should not be fatal in the presence of effective medical care (ie, amenable mortality). Previous analyses of mortality amenable to health care only focused on high-income countries and faced several methodological challenges. …
