Tuberculosis news

November 2017

Solving of a decade-long mystery could help in fight against TB. 

Scientists at BSMS and the University of Sussex have solved a decade-old mystery that could eventually lead to the development of earlier treatments for one of the world’s deadliest diseases, which affects up to two billion people.
Research carried out in collaboration with the Polish Academy of Sciences has identified two key proteins that allow mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), to "lay low" within cells designed to destroy them. Professor Simon Waddell, Senior Lecturer in Microbial Pathogenesis at BSMS, said: "This study defines a new DNA repair pathway in mycobacteria. A greater understanding of such fundamental bacterial systems may lead to new drug therapies and strategies to prevent the emergence of drug-resistant tuberculosis."

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January 2017

'Survival gene' stops strains of TB mutating into deadly 'superbugs'

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study reported the discovery of a gene called NucS that dramatically reduces mutation rates in mycobacteria – the infectious microbe that causes TB.

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death worldwide by an infectious disease, killing 1.8 million people every year. Drug-resistant TB is on the rise, with drug-resistant strains of the disease identified in 105 countries and TB accounting for one-third of all drug-resistant bacterial infections. The research team believe that the identification of this key pathway, required to supress mutation rates in mycobacteria, is an important step towards understanding how ‘superbugs’ develop.

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September 2016

Funding award for Ms Rehab Ahmed 

Congratulations to Rehab Ahmed in the Department of Pharmaceutical Microbiology, University of Khartoum, Sudan for winning funds for a 4 month research visit to WTBSCGHR to investigate the action of novel anti-tuberculosis compounds. 

April 2016

It is possible to predict how well tuberculosis (TB) responds to drug treatment, according to a new study at BSMS

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Professor Simon Waddell, working with a team of researchers from the UK, South Africa and Finland, has discovered bacterial biomarkers that predict early treatment success. This may allow patients to finish drug therapy early, reducing the difficult and debilitating side effects of the drugs and cutting treatment costs.

There were 9 million new cases and 1.5 million deaths from TB in 2013, and there are around 6,000 cases in the UK annually. The standard drug therapy is a combination of four drugs taken over six months. Side effects can be severe, and it can be difficult for patients to stay on treatment for the duration of therapy, leading to ineffective treatment and the emergence of drug-resistant TB.

Dr Waddell and collaborators mapped the responses of TB bacteria during standard drug therapy to understand why some bacteria survive through months of drug treatment. The study showed for the first time that by testing patients’ sputum, specific changes could be identified in the TB bacteria two weeks after starting drug therapy that could predict the success of treatment six weeks later.

“This exciting proof-of-principle study showed that bacterial responses could be used to understand drug action in patients, and that these signatures may be used as biomarkers allowing us to predict when patients may safely finish treatment,” says Dr Waddell.

“Profiling TB bacteria in this way may help find predictive markers of treatment success that are desperately needed in clinical trials and in the clinic. This would reduce the cost of drug trials needed to test new drugs for TB, and allow doctors to quickly stratify patients who are not responding to drug therapy.”

The study ‘Profiling persistent tubercule bacilli from patient sputa during therapy predicts early drug efficacy’ was published in BMC Medicine in a special collection to mark World TB Day 2016.

Honeyborne, I, TD McHugh, I Kuittinen, A Cichonska, D Evangelopoulos , K Ronacher, PD van Helden, SH Gillespie, D Fernandez-Reyes, G Walzl, J Rousu, PD Butcher, SJ Waddell (2016). Profiling persistent tubercule bacilli from patient sputa during therapy predicts early drug efficacy. BMC Med; 14:68.