A Taiwan program of comprehensive support and care centered on the needs of patients being treated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis — at a cost of from $25,000 to $30,000 per patient, per year over the costs of medicines — substantially improved cure rates and drastically reduced rates of patients whose outcomes were unknown, according to a study reported in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

At a conference focused on “Accelerating toward elimination” attention turns again to stalled rollouts of the most promising medicines and regimens.

Childhood TB is a major issue, infecting up to one million children each year. The good news is that there are several effective diagnostic, treatment, and prevention strategies that can have a major impact on decreasing the burden of childhood TB and mortality. These include interventions like contact tracing, fixed-dose medication, and rapid testing. We must consider however, that not every strategy is going to be equally effective in every context. What works well in Kenya may not be as effective in India and vice-versa. With limited resources at our disposal, how do we decide which intervention approach to invest our efforts in? How do we make sure that the options we select will have the best evidence-based impact on child TB morbidity and mortality in the country we’re working in?

Analysis shows TB may be sixth highest cause of under-five deaths; toll could be prevented with improved case-finding, diagnosis

Fewer than half of countries with high rates of tuberculosis incidence surveyed in a recent study have guidelines recommending screening for the disease among children receiving services for malnutrition, even though having those guidelines, increasing case-finding among children, linking them to care, and tracking their contacts could lead to inroads against the leading infectious disease killer, according to authors of a report on the findings. The study gathered and analyzed malnutrition management guidelines from 17 countries with high rates of tuberculosis.

A randomized trial of clinical outcomes for patients with drug-resistant tuberculous meningitis underscores that new diagnostic tools and treatments for the disease are critically needed, authors of a report in the July Clinical Infectious Diseases write. Their study found early identification of drug-resistance and intensified treatment to be pivotal in improving survival chances of people with the disease, the most fatal form of TB, that also is among the most difficult to detect. Even with treatment, the disease kills about a third of patients who have it the authors note.

Data on patients treated with one of the two newest tuberculosis medicines in 15 countries across five continents show that the treatment, which represents a last resort for hundreds of thousands of people with drug-resistant strains of disease, can be administered safely in a wide range of settings, and bring greatly improved outcomes compared to patients without access to the medicine, according to a recent study.

In December 2015, tuberculosis response advocates welcomed the release of a White House National Action Plan for Combating Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis with wary optimism. Promised months earlier as part of a broader administration initiative to tackle antimicrobial resistance, a set of specific goals to counter the growing threat of tuberculosis that does not respond to available medicines would, advocates hoped, inspire funding to support improved treatment and diagnoses of the disease. At the same time, advocates noted, without that funding, the plan would remain nothing more than a plan. They pointed to an earlier initiative with the same name, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1992 that, unsupported by federal dollars, had never materialized into action or results. And they pointed out that, released in the final week of 2015, the plan had arrived too late to achieve goals that it had set, and aimed to meet “by 2016.”

SEATTLE – In the halting progress against tuberculosis in people living with HIV, advances in both diagnosis and effective treatment have come with gaps and caveats, highlighted, and then answered with research presented last week in sessions and press conferences dedicated to tuberculosis.

Last June, a Perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine noted the critical place that the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines had assumed in global health policy and responses — donors, governments and insurers were all more likely to invest in promoting accessibility of medicines that were on the list. The list includes medicines critical to meeting individual and public health needs, treating illnesses and curtailing their transmission. The authors, representing health, research and academic institutions from Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Baltimore, Kampala, Uganda and more, noted a missing piece that would allow better use of the medicines on the list — a list of diagnostic tools that would ensure they were used appropriately, improving care and reducing the risks of antimicrobial resistance. Time for a Model List of Essential Diagnostics also noted some of the other benefits — improved surveillance of outbreaks that have recently included Zika and Ebola, and improved, more consistent awareness and management of known health challenges.