| Health / Health News |
Breakthroughs hailed in childhood TB prevention
A single, daily dose of levofloxacin reduced the risk of MDR-TB disease in children by 56 per cent, researchers from the Desmond Tutu TB Centre at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University announced.
More funding is needed to combat Koch's bacillus, the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis. Photo: NIAID
Children are particularly vulnerable to MDR-TB, a form of the disease that has developed resistance to two or more of the first-line drugs used against it.
Because of this resistance, treatment of the disease can be a long and difficult process, which many patients don’t complete. In contrast, this preventative drug comes in the form of a child-friendly, fruit-flavoured tablet.
An estimated two million children a year become newly infected with MDR-TB, which, if left untreated, can develop into what is known as “active TB”, a serious and highly contagious illness that commonly affects the lungs.
“Once it progresses to active disease, multidrug-resistant TB treatment is long and harrowing for children and their families to endure,” said Anneke Hesseling, director of the Desmond Tutu TB Centre and principal investigator of the TB-CHAMP trial, at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University.
The late-stage trial involved 1,000 healthy children who had been exposed to MDR-TB in communities with high burdens of TB and MDR-TB across South Africa.
Late last month researchers announced what they said could be a game changer in detecting TB in children, in the form of a simple, rapid analytical tool.
A major reason for the high death toll from TB is the difficulty and delays in diagnosing the disease in children.
Most TB tests for adults and children rely on using sputum or phlegm. But small children cannot produce sputum on request.
Also, childhood TB has a low bacterial load and non-specific symptoms, often contributing to misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose at an early stage.
The new diagnostic tool requires only a finger prick of blood.
The study was led by the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, in collaboration with partners from South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi and India.
Laura Olbrich, a medical researcher from LMU and one of the study’s authors, said once diagnosed, 95 per cent of TB cases can be cured.
“So, a test that works on fingerstick blood and can be used without much lab infrastructure, could change the problem substantially,” Olbrich said.
The tool, developed in partnership with US diagnostics company Cepheid and currently at prototype stage, identified almost 60 per cent of children with tuberculosis, with 90-per cent specificity, or accuracy.
According to paediatric specialist Norbert Heinrich, a co-author of the study, the test has the advantage that the blood sample can be conveniently taken from the fingertip and the results are rapid. “We have the results in just over an hour,” he told. “For most other tests, the samples must be sent to outside laboratories for analysis.”
According to the WHO, TB is the world’s second deadliest disease next to COVID-19, killing 1.3 million in 2022. It is the leading killer among people with HIV.
An estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TB in 2022, up from 10.3 million in 2021. Most of these were from Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa. (SciDev.Net)
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