As the world raises awareness of the global tuberculosis burden on World TB Day — March 24, 2012 — Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (Seattle BioMed) is celebrating an important discovery that could direct new strategies for TB vaccine development. Known as “the world’s most successful disease,” TB remains the second deadliest infectious disease, killing more than one million people annually. However, by studying the basic biology of M tuberculosis (the bacteria that causes TB disease), as well as its interaction with the immune system, Seattle BioMed researchers have grasped an important piece of new information about TB’s ability to manipulate immune response.

There is currently insufficient evidence to adopt new case definitions for drug-resistant TB.

India had an estimated 63,000 cases of notified multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in 2010, the highest in the South East Asia region, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

Geneva – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is playing a major role in transforming global TB efforts, enabling an increasing number of people around the world to access good quality diagnosis and treatment of TB, including multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB. By the end of 2011, programmes supported by the Global Fund detected and treated 8.6 million people with TB.

South African people taking a lopinavir/ritonavir-based antiretroviral combination and a rifampin (rifampicin)-based anti-TB regimen generally responded well to a doubling of the lopinavir dose or to an additional 300 mg of ritonavir to overcome the impact of rifampin on lopinavir concentrations.

ROCKVILLE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 22, 2012-- Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today announced that it has received a multi-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to advance the development of MVA85A, a candidate vaccine against tuberculosis (TB). The vaccine is being developed through a partnership between Aeras and the Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium (OETC), a joint venture between Emergent and the University of Oxford, where the vaccine was originally developed and investigated.

Forty-five years. That's how long it's been since the last drug - rifampin - hit the market to treat tuberculosis, an infection that affects nearly one third of the world's population and causes 1.8 million deaths annually.

Leading international experts in tuberculosis and related diseases from at least 10 countries will gather at a Human Immunity to Tuberculosis conference April 13-14 in Atlanta. The meeting will take place at the Emory Conference Center, 1615 Clifton Rd., Atlanta, GA 30329.

22 March 2012 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged countries to step up their efforts to prevent tuberculosis (TB), including by increasing access to treatments and improving the quality of their health services to be able to “stop TB in our lifetime.”

UNITAID has made a name for itself by creating the market for child-friendly HIV medicines but did you know it is also one of the world’s largest funders of tuberculosis (TB) medicines for kids?