For three years, Lydia* and her three small children have slept rough on the streets of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, begging for handouts from passers-by during the day and huddling together for warmth in alleys at night. She was diagnosed with TB a year ago when she visited a public health facility, but was unable to finish her medication due to lack of food and now her health is deteriorating.

A highly specific and sensitive fluorescent molecule can rapidly detect tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in sputum samples, according to work published this week in Nature Chemistry¹. Scientists hope that it will soon lead to a quick and cheap diagnostic tool for the disease.

Arusha — East African Community Secretariat has warned that the Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is on the rise and its attendant cost of care threatens the economy of the region and may reverse the gains that the East African Community had made so far.

MUMBAI — The discovery of an almost untreatable form of tuberculosis in India has set off alarm bells around the world and helped spur a dramatic expansion of government efforts to battle the killer lung disease.

Overcoming Tuberculosis by Paul Thorn - a book designed to help people undergoing TB treatment understand the nature of the illness and cope well with it – has been translated into Russian and adapted for the sociocultural context of Central Asia. Initially the book will be distributed in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The book is sponsored by USAID, whose staff created the translation, and the Stop TB Partnership.

Reconstructing the spread of killer diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) from person to person using DNA sequencing quickly identifies the origin and movement of pathogens. This approach is directly informing public health strategies to control infectious disease outbreaks, says a scientist speaking at the Society for General Microbiology’s Autumn Conference at the University of Warwick.

The FDA will aim to complete its review within six months of the NDA submission. The NDA was submitted June 29.

A research to investigate for the first time the effect of vitamin D on the immune responses of patients receiving treatment for an infectious disease.

Tuberculosis (TB) has remained a major infectious disease in developing and poor countries despite all efforts from health agencies to manage and control it. In fact, even an easy and effective way to diagnose the disease has remained a challenge. Emergence of drug resistant strains has made its management more complex.

While many European countries are progressing towards TB elimination, the target of less than 1 TB case/1,000,000 population is still far from being achieved everywhere.