An international team of researchers, led by Stephan Schwander, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Global Public Health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-School of Public Health (UMDNJ-SPH), has received a $2.96 million grant to conduct a "real-world" study on the impact of urban air pollution on the human immune system's ability to resist Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). The grant has been awarded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Technology developed by scientists at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute could halve the time it takes to diagnose tuberculosis infection, and also tell doctors in a day or two whether the bacteria are drug resistant -- a process that currently takes weeks. Initial tests of the device were recently described in Scientific Reports, a Nature online journal.

Tuberculosis independently predicts death from lung cancer in the elderly, according to a new study from researchers in Hong Kong.