Drug Resistant Tuberculosis News and Research

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New diagnostic test for drug-resistant TB allows 'new approach' to fight disease

The widespread incidence of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) "calls for a new approach to TB in the developing world," a Bloomberg editorial states.

11 Jul 2012

Johnson & Johnson seeking U.S. approval for first new TB drug in more than 4 decades

"Johnson & Johnson [J&J] said Monday that it is seeking U.S. approval for the first new type of medicine to fight deadly tuberculosis [TB] in more than four decades," the Associated Press reports, adding, "The experimental drug, called bedaquiline, also would be the first medicine specifically for treating multi-drug resistant tuberculosis."

4 Jul 2012

Janssen seeks accelerated FDA approval for bedaquiline to treat MDR-TB

Janssen Research & Development, LLC today announced it has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking accelerated approval for the use of the investigational drug bedaquiline (TMC207) as an oral treatment, to be used as part of combination therapy for pulmonary, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in adults.

2 Jul 2012

Examining the threat of multi-drug resistant TB in India

The Wall Street Journal reports on a rise of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) in India, writing, "India's slow response to years of medical warnings now threatens to turn the country into an incubator for a mutant strain of tuberculosis that is proving resistant to all known treatments, raising alarms of a new global health hazard."

21 Jun 2012

VOA News, PlusNews examine tuberculosis in South Africa

Several articles published on Tuesday examine tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. "According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the country has the highest rate of new TB cases annually," VOA News writes, adding, "Thousands of people in South Africa continue to be infected by a disease that's been virtually eradicated in the developed world."

21 Jun 2012

Survey finds 1 in 10 new cases of TB in China are drug-resistant

"One in 10 cases of tuberculosis in China cannot be treated by the most commonly-used drugs, driven by a lack of testing and misuse of medicine, according to a national survey that showed for the first time the size of the drug-resistant epidemic," the Associated Press reports.

8 Jun 2012

Experimental drug tested against multi-drug resistant TB

"Researchers who tested a novel type of antibiotic against multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis [MDR-TB] are reporting that nearly half of patients who got the new drug cleared the bacteria from their lung fluid in two months," according to a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Reuters reports.

8 Jun 2012

Call for increased screening and faster testing for drug-resistant tuberculosis

Johns Hopkins experts in the prevention and treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are calling for increased screening and more rapid testing of the 9 million people worldwide estimated to be infected each year with TB, and now at risk for this form of the highly contagious lung disease. The call follows results of a survey showing that the harder-to-treat TB variants are much more widespread than previously thought.

7 Jun 2012

Einstein receives NIH grant to create new vaccine against TB

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University a five-year, $5.9 million grant to develop a new vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), including the toughest-to-treat forms of the disease known as multi drug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant. The grant will build on a new approach to TB vaccine design that is based on genetically altered Mycobacterium smegmatis, which is closely related to the bacterial species (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that causes TB in humans.

1 Jun 2012

IOM releases summary of workshop on drug-resistant TB in India

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) on Friday released a summary of a joint workshop by the Institute of Medicine, the Indian National Science Academy, and the Indian Council of Medical Research, titled, "Facing the Reality of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: Challenges and Potential Solutions in India."

27 Apr 2012

U.S. must embrace competitive election process for World Bank presidency to support Kim's nomination

In this New York times opinion piece, Thomas Bollyky, senior fellow for global health, economics and development at the Council on Foreign Relations, comments on the controversy surrounding President Barack Obama's nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the World Bank presidency, writing, "For the first time since the World Bank's creation at the end of World War II, the United States is facing a real challenge over the bank's leadership. Leaders of some developing and emerging economies have refused to support President Obama's unexpected choice of Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, to lead the bank."

10 Apr 2012

Nursing research news from Johns Hopkins

Two decades ago, the landmark Cruzan decision catalyzed individual thinking, policy discussions and lawmaking about advance care directives and choices.

7 Apr 2012

India's public, private sectors must do more to control TB

In this Lancet opinion piece, Madhukar Pai, a professor and tuberculosis (TB) researcher at McGill University and consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses TB control in India. He writes, "Much has been said and written in the media about totally drug-resistant tuberculosis… However, all of these discussions really miss the key point -- that tuberculosis continues to be a huge problem in India, and that the conditions for emergence of drug resistance are undeniably prevalent, in both public and private sectors."

28 Mar 2012

Inadequate government TB program, lax drug sale regulations contributing to MDR-TB cases in India, health groups say

"India's inadequate government-run tuberculosis [TB] treatment programs and a lack of regulation of the sale of drugs that fight the disease are responsible for the increasing number of drug-resistant cases that are difficult to treat," health advocacy organizations said in India last week, the Associated Press/Huffington Post reports.

28 Mar 2012

India’s TB treatment inadequate raising risk of drug resistance

India suffers from inadequate government-run tuberculosis (TB) treatment programs and a lack of regulation of the sale of drugs against TB. This has led to the rise in number of drug-resistant cases that are difficult to treat, health activists said Friday.

26 Mar 2012

Reuters examines global rise in drug-resistant tuberculosis cases

"[O]ften seen in the wealthy West as a disease of bygone eras," Reuters examines rising rates of tuberculosis (TB) -- drug-resistant TB in particular -- among the world's rich and poor. "[R]apidly rising rates of drug-resistant TB in some of the wealthiest cities in the world, as well as across Africa and Asia, are again making history," Reuters writes.

21 Mar 2012

TB Alliance launches new combination drug trial

In an ambitious effort to stem the dangerous tide of tuberculosis (TB) and deadly drug-resistant TB around the world, TB Alliance today announced that it has launched a first-of-its-kind clinical trial to test a novel drug combination – in both patients who have TB and those who have multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB).

19 Mar 2012

Kenya's ability to diagnose, treat MDR-TB questioned after mismanagement of patient's case

"The Kenyan government's recent failure to adequately treat a patient with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has some civil society organizations questioning whether the country's TB program is equipped to diagnose and treat such patients," PlusNews reports.

2 Mar 2012

Burma unable to expand HIV, TB treatment programs without more donor support, MSF report says

Approximately 85,000 HIV-positive people in Burma, also known as Myanmar, are in need of antiretroviral treatment (ART) and cannot access it "due to a lack of funding, despite renewed international engagement with the government amid a wave of political reform, according to a report released Wednesday" by the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the Associated Press/CBS News reports.

23 Feb 2012

USAID provides testing equipment to Vietnam to help speed diagnoses of drug-resistant TB

USAID on Monday said it has "delivered the first two of 17 planned laboratory devices" to help quickly diagnose drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB), VOA's "Breaking News" blog reports.

8 Feb 2012