Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, remains the leading cause of infectious disease worldwide, affecting approximately a quarter of the globe's population. Treatment of infections is problematic due to the emergence of drug-resistant strains; however, University of Oklahoma professor Helen Zgurskaya, an expert in antibiotic resistance, is leading research on new potential therapeutic treatments for the disease.

The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) released a newsletter with the latest TB training and education news.

In 2021, TB CAB celebrated its tenth anniversary of advocating for community engagement in research and improved access to TB prevention, treatment, and diagnostic technologies.

South Africa is among the 30 high TB burden countries and has one of the highest incidence rates of notified TB in the world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Program in collaboration with the Noncommunicable Diseases Department has initiated a process to review the evidence on TB and diabetes and the related interventions to address the joint burden of TB and diabetes.

Tuberculosis (TB) is hard to diagnose in children, especially very young ones. This is because it is difficult for children to cough up the sputum required to perform the gold standard molecular TB test. Even if they do manage to cough up sputum, there may not be enough TB bacteria in it for a positive diagnosis since children’s sputum harbours fewer bugs than that of adults.

Children with HIV-associated TB have few antiretroviral therapy options. A study, published in The Lancet HIV, evaluated the safety and pharmacokinetics of dolutegravir twice-daily dosing in children receiving rifampicin for HIV-associated TB.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Global TB Program has initiated a process to review the evidence on the relative risks of health-related risk factors (alcohol use disorders, diabetes, HIV, tobacco smoking and undernutrition) that drive the TB epidemic globally. WHO is, therefore, seeking expressions of interest from academic institutions or other entities with relevant expertise and experience to perform the systematic reviews, synthesis and quality assessment of the available data.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one-quarter of the world's population is estimated to be infected by TB bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), which can cause tuberculosis (TB). Although it is preventable and curable, 1.5 million people die from the infectious lung disease each year. TB is also a leading cause of death for people living with HIV. Most people infected with TB bacteria remain in a stage of latent TB and never develop TB disease. However, about 5 to 15% of people with latent TB may develop active TB disease in the future and potentially spread it to others. As X-ray and CT diagnostics are too unspecific for early and accurate detection of subclinical TB disease, there are to date no diagnostic tools to assess TB disease activity in living patients during clinically latent TB or during a HIV/TB coinfection.

The Union and international partners are exploring whether the detection and control of tuberculosis (TB) can be improved using the “7-1-7” metric.