Recent news
January 2012
CDC researcher highlights science and research in the fight against TB
January 27, 2012 -- Kevin Cain, chief of the tuberculosis (TB) branch for the Kenya Medical Research Institute/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KEMRI/CDC) partnership, wrote a blog post this week for Global Health Frontline News about the importance of research to identify new ways to treat and prevent the disease.
In his post, Cain outlines the severe toll that TB is waging across the globe, citing both the soaring number of lives lost and the damage to economies in developing countries. While TB is a treatable and preventable disease, Cain writes that the situation has become this dire due largely to “neglect.”
“Believe it or not, most of the world still relies on the same diagnostic test developed … in the 1880s, in spite of the fact it misses the diagnosis in about half the patients with the disease. The drugs used for treatment were developed in the 1950s and 1960s and require patients to take six months of up to four drugs per day. There is no effective vaccine,” Cain writes, adding, “In addition to all of this, the tools available were not implemented very well in most places. This has left TB spreading out of control, taking lives at will, and developing resistance to our current treatments. The bacteria has actually evolved more quickly than the science aimed at stopping it, and now there are some strains that can’t be treated successfully with any of the drugs we have, leaving patients to a fate you could have expected before antibiotics were developed.”
According to Cain, within the past decade meaningful progress has been made to develop new TB prevention and treatment tools, but more work needs to be done. Important recent steps to fight TB include the development of new drugs and new clinical trials to test vaccine candidates. In addition, KEMRI/CDC is beginning a study to develop a shorter and simpler treatment for TB. The site is also working to test a new diagnostic tool to better detect TB among people with HIV.
Cain concludes that much “remains to be done. Most importantly we must avoid the mistakes of the past by keeping our efforts to end TB strong. The world cannot afford another phase of neglect. We know by partnering with governments as well as affected communities in innovative ways more progress can be made improving programs and the tools available for diagnosing, treating, and preventing TB and lives will be saved.”- Read the full blog post here.
