The achievements and ongoing efforts of CPTR’s work on the Hollow Fiber System Model for TB (HFS-TB) are detailed in a new supplement published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal. The supplement includes an editorial by EMA on its qualification of this tool to reliably assess the potential efficacy of new drugs and combination regimens, an editorial by FDA supporting the use of this tool in drug development and articles co-authored by members of CPTR’s Preclinical and Clinical Sciences Workgroup. It can be read online here.

Patents are protected by governments because they are held to promote innovation. But there is plenty of evidence that they do not.

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – A new assay system for multi-drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis purports to address cost and versatility issues affecting currently available TB tests.

As healthcare workers die of TB - physicians, health organisations, TB groups, public health experts, and associations of healthcare workers - call for urgent action.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first new drug to fight tuberculosis (TB) in more than 40 years, but treatment still takes six months, 200 pills and leaves 40 percent of patients uncured. Thus, new targets are needed. Today in ACS Central Science, researchers report they have identified one such target -- a gene that allows the disease to camp out in human immune cells, and is thus essential for the organism's proliferation.

A letter in support of Obama Administration’s recently announced initiative to develop a National Action Plan to Address Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis.

In 1997, when the field of paleomicrobiology was just emerging, University College London microbiologists Helen Donoghue and Mark Spigelman attended a conference in Hungary focused on the evolution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB). A few years earlier, Spigelman and PhD student Eshetu Lemma had published the first paper on ancient M. tuberculosis DNA, examining centuries-old samples using PCR (Int J Osteoarchaeol, 3:137-43, 1993). At the conference, Spigelman and Donoghue presented work they’d done to recover M. tuberculosis DNA from much-more-recent human skeletal remains, collected as part of a forensic case dating to the mid-20th century.

A monograph written for healthcare workers in any setting who are faced with the complex care for patients with tuberculosis.

The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IJTLD) is the official publication of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union).

Research published today (August 10) identifies a critical missed opportunity in current TB, HIV and TB-HIV programmes. Smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke are known to exacerbate these diseases, but evidence-based strategies to reduce tobacco use are not yet routinely included in treatment programmes. The paper, published in The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, makes the case that addressing tobacco use, as a modifiable risk factor common to both diseases, would improve TB and HIV outcomes and care.