Randomized clinical trial of high-risk clients finds three-month, once daily, two-drug TB treatment outcomes exceed those of nine-month, once weekly, one-drug regimen.

A Lancet editorial responds to the WHO's sixteenth annual report on global tuberculosis (TB) control, released on Oct 11, which shows that the incidence of tuberculosis has been falling worldwide since 2002, writing, "Successes in disease control in China and other countries show what sustained political and economic support can achieve. Rather than waiting for the elixir of economic success to arrive in all high-burden countries, committed action by donors, agencies, and governments in the most challenging settings is needed in the global campaign against tuberculosis."

In HIV/TB patients with a badly eroded immune system, early treatment of HIV saves lives, researchers found.

Murambinda Mission Hospital has made strides in providing quality health care as an integrated health centre. Three years ago it was reported that patients were sleeping at the hospital to access health services.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, in conjunction with the World Health Organization, private sector and foundation partners, is preparing to launch a new voluntary database for the sharing of intellectual property for research and development on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for neglected diseases, according to sources in Geneva.

"Russia plans to step up its international role in fighting infectious disease across eastern Europe and central Asia, in what some observers see as the latest effort by the Kremlin to reassert its political influence over its former Soviet neighbors," the Financial Times reports. "Arkady Dvorkovich, economic aide to President Dmitry Medvedev, pledged money for a new international development agency to support programs against HIV and tuberculosis (TB)" at the Millennium Development Goal 6 Forum hosted in Moscow last week, the newspaper notes.

The National TB Control Programme under the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in partnership with the Medical Research Council (MRC) The United Kingdom Unit recently signed an agreement to conduct survey on control of TB in The Gambia.

The University Teaching Hospital (UTH) has embarked on a project of evaluating new and practical tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic methods using a loop-medicated isothermal amplification (LAMP) which is said to be rapid, cost effective and simple does not require sophisticated equipment compared to the conventional method currently beingused.

Saranac Lake, N.Y. – New research from the Trudeau Institute may help in the ongoing fight against tuberculosis. Dr. Andrea Cooper's lab has discovered a connection between the development of new lymphoid tissue within the lung and protection against the disease. The new data will be published in the November 1 print issue of The Journal of Immunology (Vol. 187, Num. 10) and is available now online ahead of print.

The results from a one-month clinical trial of immunotherapy of tuberculosis were published in the Open Journal of Immunology – an open access journal - with full text of article available at (http://www.scirp.org/journal/Home.aspx?JournalID=602). The study involved 48 TB patients who were treated for an average of six years with conventional TB drugs and failed to respond. As a result they were placed on so-called palliative therapy consisting of just two TB drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin. These patients were then given one daily pill of V5 immunomodulator in addition to their palliative treatment and checked after one month for the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in their sputum. Surprisingly 30 patients (62.5%) had cleared TB-causing bacterium and their clinical symptoms improved significantly. Increased weight gain and reduced fever and inflammation biomarkers associated with TB were most common signs of improvement.