Blood test for Tuberculosis

Together with AIDS, tuberculosis ranks among those infectious diseases with the highest global mortality rate, claiming the lives of between 1.5 and two million people every year. However, not everyone infected with the bacterium develops tuberculosis. In fact, fewer than ten percent of those infected go on to manifest the disease. An international team of scientists, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, have now developed a tuberculosis test that can reliably predict whether an individual will develop active tuberculosis. Doctors may be able to use this test in future to predict the progression of the disease and initiate medical care early.

In future, molecules from blood samples can tell physicians if somebody will develop tuberculosis.

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Source: cli-online

New Method Developed for Detecting Mycobacteria in the Lungs

A research team from the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the University of Zurich and the National Center for Mycobacteria has carried out a large-scale study with more than 6800 patient samples to examine molecular-based methods for the detection of mycobacterial pathogens. Because many mycobacteria only grow at a slow pace, routine detection using bacteria cultures in highly specialized and expensive high-safety labs takes several weeks to complete. The subsequent susceptibility test to determine the appropriate medicine also takes 1 to 2 weeks.

"For patients and doctors, this long waiting period is an unnecessary test of their patience", says Peter Keller, M.D., from the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the UZH. "By comparison, with molecular detection methods, most patients know after 1 or 2 days whether they have an infection with tuberculosis pathogens or with nontuberculous mycobacteria."

Mycobacteria cause various illnesses. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the main representative of this genus, is the causative agent of tuberculosis, which killed around 1.5 million people worldwide in 2014.

Read more: New Method Developed for Detecting Mycobacteria in the Lungs

Mycobacterium tuberculosis in patient samples.

Source: genengnews