The emergence of drug resistance is threatening the control of tuberculosis in South Africa and other parts of the world. Researchers from K-RITH and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have traced the roots of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR TB) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) to the late 1950s. Their findings, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, have vital implications for the way we understand how XDR strains are spread, and the management and treatment of TB in South Africa and elsewhere in the world.

DURBAN, South Africa. 24 March 2014: On World Tuberculosis Day, IBM and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH) have announced plans to research new treatment approaches to fight tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. IBM’s Big Data analytics technologies will be put to work on bacterial genetics and drug susceptibility tests to better understand the genomic mechanisms that cause resistance to antibiotics. The ultimate goal is to find new treatments and diagnostic approaches to fight TB.