9 March 2012 - Johannesburg - Preliminary results from a research project carried out in South Africa show that gold miners who took a daily dose of isoniazid preventive treatment (IPT) on a daily basis for 9 months had 63% fewer cases of tuberculosis (TB) than a control group of miners who had no preventive treatment.

On March 8, and across the world the International Women's Day is being commemorated. Coincidentally, March is the global tuberculosis (TB) awareness month. The disease, which is caused by a mycrobatrium, has a major impact on women's sexual reproductive health and that of their children.

Johannesburg — Gold miners in Southern Africa are probably the group worst affected by tuberculosis (TB) in the world. This is according to Dr David Mametja of South Africa's National TB Programme.

At the 19^th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle, Dr. Helen Ayles presented some key results on behalf of the ZAMSTAR team from the first randomized trial of a combined HIV and TB intervention strategy to demonstrate a reduction in population prevalence of tuberculosis.

Treating patients co-infected with HIV and tuberculosis (TB) can be tricky – as rifampin, a key sterilizing drug in TB regimens – can reduce concentrations of antiretrovirals administered at the same time, as well as other drug-drug complications. Early efforts to combat this phenomenon have unearthed a potential treatment candidate – an increased dose of dolutegravir (DTG), an investigational HIV integrase inhibitor currently in Phase III trials.

After seven years of research, the world's largest study of preventative tuberculosis (TB) therapy has found that untargeted, community-wide distribution of TB prevention drugs did not improve TB control on South African gold mines.

TB has been with us since times immemorial. In ancient India it was called Rajrog or the King’s Disease. A benevolent king would dole out gold coins to the poor, which raised their economic status, leading to improvement in their nutritional standards.

A renewed call for cheap tests that can rapidly identify resistant forms of the disease.

Patients suffering from tuberculosis (TB) must complete their treatment as unfinished medication could lead to the growth of drug-resistant bacteria, which could easily spread to others in the form of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR TB).

The new GeneXpert machine just installed in Tomsk, Russia cuts the time needed to test people for tuberculosis (TB) from weeks to just two hours. In a region with an especially high rate of TB, the system enables medical providers to identify and treat TB and multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) early and fast. This in turn improves patients' quality of life and curbs the spread of disease.