Tuberculosis (TB), fuelled in part by the HIV epidemic, remains a major challenge to public health. Despite the potential for most cases of tuberculosis to be curable, TB causes around two million deaths per annum. These deaths are in part due to late or missed diagnosis. Improving the performance of diagnostics and their availability are key to reducing global morbidity and mortality.

The European Respiratory Journal is today (04 August 2011) publishing the updated guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) that aim to help manage drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB).

“Use of Urine Volatile Organic Compounds To Discriminate Tuberculosis Patients from Healthy Subjects”
Analytical Chemistry

University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center will begin a Phase 1 clinical trial on a new experimental anti-tuberculosis drug called TMC207. This drug represents the first new class of anti-TB drugs in the past 60 years and it has activity against both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB.

Two research studies in this week's PLoS Medicine suggest that a new automated DNA test for tuberculosis (Xpert MTB/RIF), which can detect TB within 2 hours and has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, can significantly increase TB detection rate compared to other tests, particularly in HIV positive patients who have a high risk of being infected with TB, including multidrug resistant TB. An accompanying Essay and Perspective highlight the economic challenges and implications of such diagnostic tests.

The lipoarabinomannan (LAM) urinary assay isn't accurate enough to be used for routine diagnosis of active tuberculosis (TB), according to a review in the European Respiratory Journal.