As infections such as tuberculosis have become immune to an ever widening range of antibiotics, doctors have looked on helplessly. Now a chemist at the University of Copenhagen has pioneered a novel way to battle multidrug resistant bacteria. By tweaking a well known psychoactive drug he revitalizes worn-out drugs like sulpha and penicillin.

Over one billion people, mostly from developing countries, suffer from neglected diseases. The majority have little or no access to treatment. A project with a new approach brings fresh hope.

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Over three quarters of tuberculosis (TB) patients aged 30 and under in Taiwan had received the TB vaccine before but still came down with the disease, signaling the need to change the TB prevention policy, a medical expert said Tuesday.

Novelist CATHERINE DUNNE writes about her visit to a community in South Africa which has been ravaged by the ‘twin evils’ of HIV and TB

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been a key partner in the world’s fight against TB, a killer disease that continues to take millions of lives despite being curable. In India, this is especially true. India bears the highest burden of TB, with over a fifth of the cases globally, and faces the disasters of drug-resistant TB and TB-HIV co-infection that could claim many more lives. The 2011 report of India’s National TB Programme points to more new TB cases added here each year (two million in 2009) than in any other country. But, equally, Global Fund support has made a vital difference. It has helped give people a voice and strengthened their very necessary role in spreading awareness and access to complete treatment to combat a disease that thrives on poverty, ignorance and stigma.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is scaling up its tuberculosis (TB) support in the Cambodian province of Kampong Cham while continuing to help shape the nation’s national TB program.

Developing a simple, paper-based test for drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is the goal of a University of Texas at Austin chemist, whose project just received a $1.6 million point-of-care diagnostics grant through Grand Challenges in Global Health, an initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Expert panels that put together the Department of Health and Human Services antiretroviral therapy (ART) guidelines have advised that the shorter and simpler combination regimen for latent tuberculosis (TB) recently recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not suitable for people being treated for HIV.

Tuberculosis (TB) is associated with an impaired immune response to antiretroviral therapy, according to Italian research published in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.