Bayer has said it will donate 620,000 tablets of its antibiotic moxifloxacin in order to help tackle multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

Pyrazinamide has been used in combination with other drugs as a first-line treatment for people with tuberculosis (TB) since the 1950s, but exactly how the drug works has not been well understood. Now, researchers have discovered a key reason why the drug effectively shortens the required duration of TB therapy. The finding potentially paves the way for the development of new drugs that can help eliminate TB in an infected individual even more rapidly. The study was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and published online on August 11 in Science Express.

Producer of the rapid TB diagnostic GeneXpert, Cepheid recently announced its 2011 second quarter profits in an earnings report and subsequent public conference call. Revenues for the quarter reached $67 million, an increase of 11 percent from the previous quarter and 35 percent from the second quarter of 2010. Cepheid is now projecting revenues of $265 to $270 million for all of 2011, $15 to $20 million above its previous projections.

ROCKVILLE, MD, USA/LONDON, UK, August 11, 2011 – Aeras and the Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium (OETC) announce today the start of a Phase IIb proof-of-concept efficacy trial of a new investigational tuberculosis (TB) vaccine that involves people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The trial will be conducted at research sites in Senegal and South Africa with primary funding support from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).

No policy has ever recommended serological (antibody) tests to detect active tuberculosis (TB) yet dozens of these blood tests are currently marketed and sold in developing countries where regulation is weak or non-existent. More than a million of these unapproved tests are carried out every year, usually at a high cost – financial and human – to unsuspecting patients. Mounting evidence clearly shows that the tests do not accurately diagnose TB – they often cause false-positives and false-negatives – and they are not as cost effective as other recommended TB tests.

This post on the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)'s Commission on Smart Global Health Policy blog examines tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa, "which has the highest tuberculosis infection rate per population and accounts for 5 percent of the global TB burden."

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 10, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Immune Network Ltd. reports that its business partner Immunitor company has launched a Phase 2 clinical trial of a novel anti-tuberculosis immunotherapy consisting of orally-delivered, heat-inactivated Mycobacterium vaccae. The new tableted preparation was formulated according to clinically validated proprietary technology developed by Immunitor company.

Following a decision by its Board, UNITAID has issued a call for letters of intent on the topic of diagnostics for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

Scientists believe they have found a marker indicating genetic predisposition to tuberculosis, bringing closer the day when doctors can adjust therapies to individuals based on their genotype. Two mutations in an immune system gene called TLR1 are responsible for cellular changes that bring resistance to TB, according to research presented in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

Only 1 percent of HIV-positive patients worldwide have been tested for tuberculosis, a curable infection that frequently kills those living with AIDS.