by Krista Conger, Stanford University Medical Center An illustration of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock.com An unexpected link between tuberculosis and cancer may lead to new drug treatments for the bacterial disease that kills more than 1.5 million people each year, according to a study led by researchers at Stanford Medicine. The study found...
Tag: <span>Tuberculosis</span>
Treatment length reduced for children with tuberculosis
by University College London Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A UCL-led international trial exploring the effectiveness of tuberculosis (TB) treatment in children has led to a change in the World Health Organisation’s global guidelines for managing the disease. The research, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that the treatment duration for the majority of children with drug...
New vaccine may provide better treatment for tuberculosis
by University of Oslo Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A new vaccine against tuberculosis may also be used as treatment. The vaccine is safe to give to people with tuberculosis disease and strengthens the immune system’s ability to attack the bacteria that cause the disease, a new study shows. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the tubercle...
Largest ever global study of tuberculosis identifies genetic causes of drug resistance
by University of Oxford Structural study of antibiotic opens the way for new TB treatments Credit: Shutterstock Using cutting-edge genomic sequencing techniques, researchers at the University of Oxford have identified almost all the genomic variation that gives people resistance to 13 of the most common tuberculosis (TB) drug treatments. The Comprehensive Resistance Prediction for Tuberculosis International...
Breathing spreads tuberculosis bacteria, research suggests
Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB. Credit: NIAID Breathing is enough to spread the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, research presented at a major conference on Tuesday shows, potentially forcing the medical community to rethink decades of containment strategy focusing on coughing alone. Using state-of-the-art equipment, at team at the University of Cape Town...
Biochemists detail protein vital to tuberculosis, antibiotic resistance
It’s as true in the realm of infectious disease as combat. And the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Limei Zhang subscribes to the maxim that best encapsulates it. “In order to fight your enemies, you have to know how your enemies survive and attack you,” said Zhang, associate professor of biochemistry. “That’s the fundamental question we are looking at.”...
Clues to tuberculosis progression found in gene expression
by The Francis Crick Institute Genes from a reduced published signature of TB risk are increasingly differentially expressed in incipient, subclinical, and clinical TB patients. (A) List of published TB 16-gene risk signature from Zak et al. (2016) where *** indicates the presence of a 30-gene signature from Leicester incipient, subclinical TB, and clinical TB from...
Old vaccine for tuberculosis may help protect older people against COVID-19
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A team of researchers from the CMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis and the ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology, both in India, has found evidence suggesting that an old vaccine used to reduce the threat of tuberculosis may give older people some protection against COVID-19. In their paper published in...
Scientists discover a surprising new way that tuberculosis suppresses immunity
by University of Maryland Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB. Credit: NIAID When Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, infects a person, the body’s immune response is critical to how the disease will progress—either helping the body fight the bacterium or exacerbating the infection University of Maryland researchers discovered a way that Mtb can...
New studies identify how tuberculosis destroy the lungs and how to protect them
Two new studies have cast unprecedented light on disease processes in tuberculosis, identifying key genetic changes that cause damage in the lungs and drug treatment that could speed up recovery. Tuberculosis (TB) is a lung infection that has killed more humans than any other and until last year was the top infectious killer around the...