Immunologist Johan Van Weyenbergh (KU Leuven) and his Belgian-Brazilian colleagues have shown that a drug used to fight arthritis also stops the process that allows the tuberculosis bacillus to infect and hijack blood stem cells.

Due to inadequate lab tests, an outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in South Africa has remained undetected for no less than five years. An international team of microbiologists led by Dr Emmanuel André (KU Leuven) and his South African colleague Ndivhuho Makhado present their findings in Lancet Infectious Diseases.