New research from Trinity team at St James's Hospital improves our understanding of how tuberculosis infection causes lung damage and how we might prevent this.

Collaborative research from Trinity and RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences is recently published in the European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and marked World TB Day (24th March 2024).

BCG is a live bacterial vaccine, of limited effectiveness for tuberculosis, but it's the only one we've got. However, scientists in the TB Immunology group at Trinity College Dublin and St. James's Hospital have provided fresh insights into the behaviour of a crucial cell in vaccine mechanisms, which may offer a fresh target for scientists seeking to improve vaccine efficacy.

Tuberculosis (TB) is still one of the biggest infectious killers in the world. Multiple drug resistant (MDR) TB has become a global health emergency, an emerging European crisis, and an important Irish public health concern. Many challenges remain in the global fight against this disease including a clinical need for effective treatments against MDR-TB.

Investigators from Trinity College Dublin, the Irish Mycobacteria Reference Laboratory, St James’s Hospital,  and the Department of Public Health HSE East believe tuberculosis (TB) care in Irish Prisons should be supported, considering the findings of their study which is published in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

The immune response to tuberculosis (TB) differs in adults and newborn babies due to the way immune cells use energy to kick into gear in a bid to kill the bacteria. This fresh discovery – just published in leading journal, Frontiers in Immunology – offers hope for improving treatments for what remains a deadly disease.

Although TB killed nearly as many people as COVID-19 (approx. 1.8 million) in 2020, it did not receive as much media and public attention. The pandemic has proven that transmissible infection is indeed a global issue. TB remains a serious public health concern in Ireland, particularly with the presence of multi-drug resistant types and the numbers of complex cases here continuing to rise, with cases numbering over 300 annually.

Although COVID-19 commands the headlines today, tuberculosis (TB) remains the biggest infection killer in the world and multiple drug resistant TB, which does not respond to regular antibiotics, continues to be a major threat to global health.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have discovered both how TB puts the brakes on our immune engines and how we can kick-start those engines back into gear -- providing hope that improved treatment options could soon be on the horizon.

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have discovered how lung cell exhaustion affects a patient’s ability to fight diseases.