Tanzania: 'Electronic nose' for TB compounds detection coming
The National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) Muhimbili Research Centre is embarking on a plan to make 'electronic noses' using computer chips to detect TB compounds using breathalysers.
Speaking exclusively to the Sunday News, the NIMR centre's Research Director and Chief Research Scientist, Dr Sayoki Mfinanga said that since it was a challenge to have APOPO Rats that can smell samples with TB compounds in hospital, they were thinking of using bioengineering to overcome the challenge.
"We are at a very preliminary stage of this project but this is certainly the direction that we want to take," he said. APOPO started its secondline TB screening programme in mid-2008 after the successful completion of the proof of principal study. Second-line screening means sputum samples are screened primarily at the diagnostic facilities of TB clinics and then screened for the second time by trained rats.
Sputum samples that were negative at the TB clinics diagnostic laboratory but found positive by the trained rats are confirmed at APOPO's diagnostic laboratory. The confirmed results are sent back to the respective TB clinics for patient tracking, treatment and follow up.
Early last year, this paper reported the findings of a Tanzania PhD student in Germany, Mr Georgies Mgode which showed that the trained giant pouched rats have a 94.4 per cent capability of detecting specific compounds that cause TB. Mr Mgode found in his research that the rats offered a promising mechanism for rapid diagnosis of TB in resource limited settings.
Between January 2009 and June 2010 a total of 23,600 samples were collected from different centres and 10,556 of them were detected with TB from findings of examiners through laboratory testing while when given to the rats they detected 620 more that were missed.
"What we envision to have is a gadget similar to the one used for detecting alcohol levels in one's breath which is simple and doesn't require a lot of training to use," Dr Mfinanga explained.
In Tanzania, tuberculosis (TB) is the third major cause of disease and death after malaria and HIV/ AIDS, and the country is one of the 22 high-TB burden countries in the world. Apart from other factors such as poverty and the HIV epidemic, the lack of a fast, efficient and simple TB diagnostic method is the main reason for the fast spread of tuberculosis.
Source: allAfrica.com
