World AIDS Day 2009 will be marked with both grim and hopeful data: more than 25 million people have died of AIDS worldwide since 1981; 33 million are living with HIV/AIDS. While potent, effective medications have changed an HIV diagnosis from death sentence to manageable chronic illness in resource rich countries, global rates of infection still outstrip prevention and treatment capacity. [More]

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c80cfb/peru_pharmaceutica) has announced the addition of the "Peru Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report Q4 2009" report to their offering. [More]

WHO Regional Director for Africa Luis Gomes Sambo said Tuesday during the 59th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in Kigali, Rwanda, that measles could be eradicated from the continent by 2020, citing an 89 percent reduction in the number of deaths caused by measles between 2000 and 2007, Angencia AngolaPress reports. [More]

The Washington Post examines the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Russia where "[p]reliminary surveys have recorded an uptick in infections," which could be the "start of a surge fueled by declining living standards and deteriorating medical care resulting from the country's worst economic slowdown in a decade," experts say. [More]

Use of a common antibiotic may be undercutting its utility as a first-line defense against drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Fluoroquinolones are the most commonly prescribed class of antibiotics in the U.S. and are used to fight a number of different infections such as sinusitis and pneumonia. They are also an effective first line of defense against TB infections that show drug resistance. New research shows, however, that widespread general use of fluoroquinolones may be creating a strain of fluoroquinolone-resistant TB. [More]

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is arguably the world's most successful infectious agent because it knows how to avoid elimination by slowing its own growth to a crawl. Now, a report in the July 10 issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, offers new insight into the bugs' talent for meager living. [More]

The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases examines the worldwide spread of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). Currently, about 500,000 of the 9 million new cases of TB that are identified each year are strains of XDR-TB. "Drug resistance is largely man-made - it is vitally important to review antibiotic treatment strategies and to ensure the Stop TB Strategy is fully applied to prevent further selection of drug-resistant mutants," Leonard Amaral of Universidade Nova de Lisboa said. [More]

South African AIDS activist Thembi Ngubane recently died of drug-resistant tuberculosis at the age of 24, the AP/Washington Post reports (Nullis, AP/Washington Post, 6/14). [More]

Health officials in the Pacific are concerned about two new strains of tuberculosis - multi drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) - both strains have been found to be resistant to the two most powerful drugs that have been used to treat tuberculosis (TB) for the past five decades. [More]

A Johnson & Johnson-run study found that its experimental drug TMC207 could make conventional tuberculosis treatment five times more effective against multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) because it cleared traces of the TB bacteria in the sputum of 48 percent of study volunteers after eight weeks, Reuters reports (Emery, Reuters, 6/3). The results were published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. [More]

It is expected that the upcoming World Health Organisation's (WHO) annual assembly will be dominated this year by the emergence and spread of the new influenza virus H1N1 (swine flu). [More]

The AP/Google.com on Monday examined efforts to prevent and control the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis in China and other countries. [More]

World Health Organization officials on Monday ahead of World TB Day on March 24 said that Asian countries should increase efforts to strengthen health systems to address an increase in cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis, AFP/Google.com reports. [More]

WHAT: In a finding that could soon help people infected with untreatable, highly drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), scientists have shown that two FDA-approved drugs work in tandem to kill laboratory-grown strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes TB. [More]

Levels of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in China are nearly twice the global average. Nationwide research published in the open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases has shown that almost 10% of Chinese TB cases are resistant to the most effective first-line drugs. [More]