Tuberculosis News and Research

Latest Tuberculosis News and Research

Opinion pieces address Global Fund's future after cancellation of Round 11 grants

The Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria decided to cancel Round 11 grant approval during a two-day meeting in Accra, Ghana, that concluded on November 22, according to a Global Fund press release (11/23).

2 Dec 2011

DNDi highlights lack of healthcare coverage for children with HIV/AIDS

Less than one-quarter (23%) of children with HIV/AIDS who need treatment are getting it, according to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the occasion of World AIDS Day.

2 Dec 2011

New insight into why aminoglycoside antibiotics cause deafness

Peter Steyger's research on hearing is very personal. That's because Steyger - a research scientist with the Oregon Hearing Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University - is deaf. Now Steyger has published groundbreaking research that is as personal as it gets. The study gives scientists new insight into why a specific class of antibiotics causes deafness - the same class of antibiotics that caused Steyger's deafness as a child in England 48 years ago. The study was published this month in Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Publishing Group.

2 Dec 2011

Opinion pieces, editorials recognize World AIDS Day

"This year we will hear that the first AIDS-free generation since the discovery of HIV may be a reality. But we are unlikely to hear what counts. As with every year, we are left more questions than answers," Barrett of Harm Reduction International writes before posing questions about the epidemic to several organizations.

2 Dec 2011

Doctors underestimate worldwide burden of CPA, says public health expert

Researchers have discovered that over a million people worldwide diagnosed with TB go on to develop an incurable but manageable fungal infection which is usually left untreated because it is mistaken for a recurrence of the disease.

2 Dec 2011

TB Research Movement formed to drive progress

Christian Lienhardt of the Stop TB Partnership and colleagues examine the research necessary to stop tuberculosis (TB) and introduce the TB Research Movement, which aims to "boost TB research and accelerate progress in TB control towards international targets," in this PLoS Medicine article.

1 Dec 2011

Prioritizing HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment

In his ForeignPolicy.com column, Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, writes that despite an "abundance of tools to fight the global AIDS epidemic," including male circumcision and treatment as prevention, "the breakthroughs don't amount to a global reprieve."

1 Dec 2011

Statens Serum Institut, Aeras initiate new candidate TB vaccine Phase I trial

Statens Serum Institut and Aeras today announce the initiation of the first Phase I clinical trial of a new candidate TB vaccine designed to protect people latently infected with TB from developing active TB disease.

1 Dec 2011

With HIV and unaware of it: CDC report

Over the years diagnosis with HIV/AIDS has ceased to become a death sentence. However a new Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) report says only one in four Americans with AIDS has the virus under control with adequate medication. Figures also show that about 16,000 people die from the disease annually, and the number of new infections each year in the U.S. has held steady at about 50,000 in recent years.

30 Nov 2011

Global Fund postpones Round 11 grants, approves new strategy and organization plan

The Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria decided to postpone Round 11 grant approval during a two-day meeting in Accra, Ghana, that concluded on November 22. According to a press release from the Global Fund, the decision to postpone Round 11 was due to "a revised resource forecast presented to the Board which showed that substantial budget challenges in some donor countries, compounded by low interest rates, have significantly affected the resources available for new grant funding."

30 Nov 2011

DNA gyrase B could rapidly eliminate TB, shorten treatment time

In research at SRI International, scientists evaluating new drug targets against tuberculosis (TB) recently validated the preclinical effectiveness of a target that could rapidly eliminate infections and potentially shorten treatment time. The new drug target is a protein called DNA gyrase B, found in bacteria that cause TB infections.

30 Nov 2011

Despite limitations of global fund programs, dangers of cutting funding are worse

In this Financial Times opinion piece, journalist Andrew Jack examines how, "[a]fter a period of fast expansion, and strong progress in tackling AIDS, [tuberculosis (TB)] and malaria alike," the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria "has become a target in the era of austerity.

29 Nov 2011

New compound circumvents drug-efflux pumps associated with Gram-positive bacteria

It's no wonder that medicine's effort to combat bacterial infections is often described as an arms race. When new drugs are developed to combat infections, the bacterial target invariably comes up with a deterrent.

29 Nov 2011

Funds for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria dry up

A global fund organization against three killer diseases says it has run out of money to pay for new grant programs for the next two years. An official with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said Thursday that it has been forced to cease giving new grants until 2014 because of global economic woes brought on by debt crises in the U.S. and Europe.

27 Nov 2011

Oral antibiotics might treat Buruli ulcer

It might be possible to treat Buruli ulcer, a crippling and deforming disease, with only oral medicines, which would make treatment easier. And even the current treatment can in many cases be given in an outpatient regimen.

23 Nov 2011

Potential cuts to global health spending threaten vision of 'AIDS-free generation'

The vision of an "AIDS-free generation" presented in a speech earlier this month by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "is under threat in Congress," as "the House and the Senate are discussing significant cuts to the 2012 Obama administration request for global health funding," Jeanie Yoon, a physician with Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), writes in a Baltimore Sun opinion piece.

22 Nov 2011

Three 'critical issues' for Global Fund to consider to ensure 'further success'

While the recent report from a High-Level Independent Review Panel of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, "and the corresponding decisions of the Board, mark an important step towards the necessary improvements the Global Fund must make to fulfill its vital mandate in the coming decade and beyond," "the report does not provide direction or solutions on certain critical issues that will define the further success and impact of the Global Fund," Richard Feachem, founding executive director of the Global Fund, writes in a Lancet commentary.

19 Nov 2011

Sony Corporation, Global Fund enter into partnership to implement behavior change projects

"Sony Corporation and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have entered into a partnership for the implementation of behavior change projects, in which Sony provides state of the art equipment and movies and the Global Fund ensures it gets to agencies best able to reach communities most in need," a Global Fund press release states, noting, "This partnership is the first pilot case that combines pro bono and in-kind contribution."

19 Nov 2011

Aid targeting high mortality diseases 'lays the groundwork' for improving primary health care services

"In recent years, initiatives such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria have helped rein in some of the biggest scourges," Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, writes in a Washington Post opinion piece.

19 Nov 2011

Efforts to end AIDS could also reduce TB burden with proper funding

In response to Michael Gerson's November 11 column in which he said the end of AIDS is possible because of combination prevention and treatment innovations, David Bryden, the Stop TB advocacy officer at RESULTS, writes in a Washington Post letter to the editor, "Another benefit of [HIV] treatment is that it sharply reduces deaths from tuberculosis [TB], which is the primary killer of people living with HIV/AIDS."

18 Nov 2011