Good news! Africa and Asia are significantly down.
Source: WHO Global tuberculosis report 2025
Credits: Human Progress weekly newsletter
Showing posts with label tuberculosis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tuberculosis. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Chart of the day
Source: WHO Global tuberculosis report 2025
Wednesday, September 07, 2022
Deep Learning Detection of Active Pulmonary Tuberculosis at Chest Radiography Matched the Clinical Performance of Radiologists
Good news! Machine learning keeps on giving!
Unfortunately, the group of selected human doctors is very small and and all were based in India.
"A new artificial intelligence tool by Google detected tuberculosis in chest X-rays, matching the skills of radiologists, according to a new Radiology study published yesterday; the AI system met or exceeded WHO performance standards for detecting the disease, which kills 1.4 million people annually."
From the abstract:
"... A total of 165 754 images in 22 284 subjects (mean age, 45 years; 21% female) were used for model development and testing. In the four-country test set (1236 subjects, 17% with active TB), the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the DLS was higher than those for all nine India-based radiologists, with an area under the ROC curve of 0.89 (95% CI: 0.87, 0.91). Compared with these radiologists, at the prespecified operating point, the DLS sensitivity was higher (88% vs 75%, P < .001) and specificity was noninferior (79% vs 84%, P = .004). Trends were similar within other patient subgroups, in the South Africa data set, and across various TB-specific chest radiograph findings. In simulations, the use of the DLS to identify likely TB-positive chest radiographs for NAAT confirmation reduced the cost by 40%–80% per TB-positive patient detected. ..."
Saturday, October 09, 2021
Tuberculosis: Humanity's Deadliest Foe
Very recommendable!
Just reminder that SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 is a relatively harmless disease!
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Tuberculosis: The Forgotten Pandemic
Very recommendable! Just a reminder! SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 is not the only pandemic causing suffering around the world!
The only known and approved vaccine for TB is now 100 years old!
"In an attempt to protect the newborn [in 1921] from the disease, doctors gave him an oral dose of what was later named Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, for its developers Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin. The duo had cultured M. bovis for more than a decade until it no longer caused disease in animals.
Nowadays, BCG is given to more than 100 million babies each year, primarily in the developing world, and saves tens of thousands of lives. But it provides incomplete protection, and TB remains the number one infectious killer on the planet. It is estimated to have wiped out 1 billion people in the past 200 years, including 1.4 million in 2019 alone. ...
In adolescents and adults, who together account for more than 90 percent of TB cases, tuberculosis presents as the more familiar lung infection, and for some reason, BCG is less effective at preventing this form of the disease. ..."
Nowadays, BCG is given to more than 100 million babies each year, primarily in the developing world, and saves tens of thousands of lives. But it provides incomplete protection, and TB remains the number one infectious killer on the planet. It is estimated to have wiped out 1 billion people in the past 200 years, including 1.4 million in 2019 alone. ...
In adolescents and adults, who together account for more than 90 percent of TB cases, tuberculosis presents as the more familiar lung infection, and for some reason, BCG is less effective at preventing this form of the disease. ..."
Monday, August 09, 2021
Tuberculosis: The Forgotten Pandemic
Very recommendable! Very long overview article! Just to put the relative harmless Covid-19 pandemic a little bit in perspective!
Did you know that there is still only one TB vaccine approved in the past 100 years! And it has shortcomings!
"TB is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and it most often affects the lungs. TB is spread through the air when people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit. A person needs to inhale only a few germs to become infected.
Every year, 10 million people fall ill with tuberculosis (TB). Despite being a preventable and curable disease, 1.5 million people die from TB each year – making it the world’s top infectious killer.
TB is the leading cause of death of people with HIV and also a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance.
Most of the people who fall ill with TB live in low- and middle-income countries, but TB is present all over the world. About half of all people with TB can be found in 8 countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and South Africa.
About one-quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be infected by TB bacteria [that is 2 billion people]. Only 5-15% of these people will fall ill with active TB disease. The rest have TB infection but are not ill and cannot transmit the disease. Both TB infection and disease are curable using antibiotics." (Source)
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on TB detection and mortality in 2020
Just a reminder that Covid-19 is not the only pathogenic mass killer! Why has humanity still not defeated this age old scourge?
Unfortunately, the UN and its organisations think Big Government or socialism is the solution: "Universal care a priority “These sobering data point to the need for countries to make universal health coverage a key priority as they respond to and recover from the pandemic, to ensure access to essential services for TB and all diseases.” ..."
"Provisional data compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) from 84 countries indicates that an estimated 1.4 million fewer people received care for tuberculosis (TB) in 2020 than in 2019 - a reduction of 21% from 2019. In the group of 10 high-burden countries with the largest reported shortfalls compared with 2019, the overall shortfall was 28%. With many people with TB unable to access care, WHO estimates that half a million more people may have died from TB in 2020 alone. TB remains one of the world’s top infectious killers. ..."
"... The biggest differences were in Indonesia (down 42 per cent), South Africa (41 per cent), the Philippines (37 per cent) and India (25 per cent). ..."
Wednesday, March 03, 2021
New biological antibiotics can beat tuberculosis
Good news! It is long overdue that humanity defeats the age old nemesis tuberculosis!
"... Researchers at Tel Aviv University have demonstrated in laboratory mice that monoclonal antibodies can be substituted for antibiotics to hinder the growth of tuberculosis germs.
It’s estimated that around a quarter of the world’s population is infected by tuberculosis. ..."
"... In the present study, we explore B cell responses during ATB [active TB], while focusing on the immune-dominant antigen PstS1. We isolate and analyze a total of 85 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) from one patient with elevated anti-PstS1 responses and find two antibodies, p4-36 and p4-163, from distinct clones that demonstrate inhibitory activity against both BCG and Mtb. Structural analysis reveals that the two antibodies are directed against two different epitopes on PstS1 and do not compete with one another. When administered prior to infection of Balb/c mice with Mtb, both antibodies cause a 50% reduction in lung bacterial burden. Our data show that both p4-36 and p4-163 exhibit antibacterial activity and provide the first proof of concept that protective antibody responses can be generated during the course of active tuberculosis disease ..."
Here is the referenced paper:
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Machine learning uncovers potential new TB drugs
Good news! This is only the very early beginning of using the power of machine learning to advance medical treatments!
"... the MIT team identified several promising compounds that target a protein required by the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. ... Using this approach, the researchers were able to identify molecules with very strong predicted binding affinities for the protein kinases they put into the model. These included three human kinases, as well as one kinase found in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. That kinase, PknB, is critical for the bacteria to survive, but is not targeted by any frontline TB antibiotics. ... The researchers then took some of their most promising PknB inhibitors and tested them against Mycobacterium tuberculosis grown in bacterial culture media, and found that they inhibited bacterial growth. The inhibitors also worked in human immune cells infected with the bacterium."
Tuesday, December 04, 2018
Antibiotic Resistance Is History
Posted: 12/4/2018 Updated: 5/28/2019, 3/21/2019
Update Of 5/28/2019
Here is a report on a new drug compound using against Gram-negative bacteria: New compound which kills antibiotic-resistant superbugs discovered. Unfortunately, the drug compound is not described in any detail, presumably to protect intellectual property.
“The new drug compound has a range of exciting opportunities. … "As the compound is luminescent it glows when exposed to light. This means the uptake and effect on bacteria can be followed by the advanced microscope techniques … The studies ... have shown the compound seems to have several modes of action, making it more difficult for resistance to emerge in the bacteria” (emphasis added)
Update Of 3/21/2019
Just read Solving the efficiency of Gram-negative bacteria. It looks like the protective outer membrane consisting of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) molecules, the production of LPS, the bridge between the bacteria’s cytoplasm and outer membrane, and the transport of LPS from the interior to the outer membrane are now much better understood.
“... first author Owens identifies two crystal structures responsible for extracting LPS from the cytoplasm and moving the molecule onto the protein bridge. Previous research proposed that LPS gets to the bridge via multiple pathways, but Owens' work determined that ATP shuttles the molecule along just one path. … the protein bridge opens and closes gates that keep the LPS moving up toward the outer membrane. "The gate provides an explanation for unidirectional transport," ... "because gate closure prevents backflow."” (emphasis added)
Original Post
Work In Progress
A blog post with this motto: Antibiotic Resistance Is History was on my mind for some time. Never got around to capture salient scientific research on this topic.
As I become aware of new scientific research, I intend to update this blog post.
Fatty Acid Synthases & Tuberculosis
The Weizmann Institute in Israel has just published some very interesting research on particular membrane molecules of the tuberculosis bacterium (Mycobacterium tuberculosis; see FAS Track to Fighting Antibiotic-Resistant TB dated 11/26/2018; Structure of Type-I Mycobacterium tuberculosis fatty acid synthase at 3.3 Ångström resolution; emphasis added):
- “...Animals and fungi tend to have type 1 (FAS-I), bacteria and archaea type 2 (FAS-II). But the TB bacterium has both FAS-I and FAS-II, and these two cooperate to produce fatty acids that are extra-long -- up to 90 carbon links in the chain, in contrast to the 16-carbon fatty acids in our cells.”
- “Mtb FAS-I is an essential enzymatic complex that contributes to the virulence of Mtb, and thus a prime target for anti-TB drugs. The structural information for Mtb FAS-I we have obtained enables computer-based drug discovery approaches”
Previous, Related Posts
I have previously blogged about the Scandal of Antibiotic Resistance. Given all the advances in Genetics etc. it is not comprehensible at all why humans should not be able to defeat dangerous bacteria like we have defeated e.g. HIV Aids. There is no excuse!
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