Moving toward tuberculosis elimination: critical issues for research in diagnostics and therapeutics for tuberculosis infection
File(s)TB Infection Manuscript 2018_09_06_clean.docx (377 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Tuberculosis (TB) has surpassed HIV to become the leading infectious killer of adults globally, causing almost 2 million deaths annually. Although this airborne disease has been treatable since 1948, global rates of TB have dropped less than two percent per year; an estimated 10 million incident cases continue to occur annually, including one million in children. While transmission of active disease is an important driver of the epidemic, the seedbed that feeds the epidemic is the more than two billion people estimated to have TB infection, five to ten percent of whom will progress to active disease during their lifetime. While any successful strategy aimed at TB elimination needs to address this reservoir of TB infection worldwide, much remains to be understood about host and pathogen factors that can be used to identify increased risk for progression to disease, and intervened upon to prevent progression from occurring. The Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, USA, and the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery–Dubai convened a group of scientists and stakeholders on September 28 and 29, 2017, to address knowledge gaps that affect our ability to rapidly find and treat individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis who are most likely to progress to active disease. The meeting identified a number of efforts underway to address this important gap in the collective ability to stop the global TB epidemic. Here, we review and outline the priority areas for research, diagnosis and treatment of TB infection that emerged from the meeting (Table 1), building on recent reviews in this area
Date Issued
2019-03-01
Date Acceptance
2018-10-02
ISSN
1073-449X
Publisher
American Thoracic Society
Start Page
564
End Page
571
Journal / Book Title
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
Volume
199
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
© 2019 by the American Thoracic Society
Subjects
11 Medical And Health Sciences
Respiratory System
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-10-18