News

TB can no longer be the neglected sister of HIV and malaria

19 May 2010

More than nine out of ten cases of tuberculosis, which kills 1.8 million people each year, could be averted by 2050 with better testing, drugs and vaccines, according to a major review published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

TB remains a deadly scourge that fails to attract as many health dollars, euros and yen as other diseases claiming as many or fewer victims, the journal said.

Detection rates have improved over the last 15 years, but nearly 40% of active infections in those nations still go untreated.

Even worse, only a quarter of the estimated 1.4 million people infected with both tuberculosis and HIV/Aids have been identified, the study reported. HIV increases the risk of TB 20 fold.

Another looming threat are so-called “œmultidrug-resistant” (MDR) forms of TB.

There remains a “œdesperate need” for a more accurate, cheaper test for detection, and for so-called “œbiomarkers” that predict whether an individual is more likely to be cured by treatment or to relapse, and whether vaccines will work.

“œTuberculosis can no longer be the neglected sister of HIV and malaria,” the authors say, pointing out that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) spend about 7% as much on TB research as for HIV, even though both diseases kill roughly the same number of people worldwide.

Read more about Lancet’s tuberculosis review at Times Live.