Press release - 19 December 2013 - A novel triage approach results in lower costs for diagnosing tuberculosis in low- and middle-income countries A group of Dutch, American, and British investigators show a cheaper way to diagnose tuberculosis. They report in the journal PLOS ONE that...
A study conducted in Brazil shows that cigarette smoking reduces the response to treatment of tuberculosis measured as the sputum culture becoming negative after 2 months. The effect remained after adjusting for differences between patients in disease severity and alcohol abuse. It was associated with...
Making a diagnosis of tuberculosis in a resource-constrained setting is challenging, especially in a population with a marked prevalence of HIV. WHO issued guidelines to help health staff to systematically assess tuberculosis in patients presenting with cough. The manuscript describes how these guidelines work in...
Slums are a known place for active TB transmission. The manuscript describes the situation in a large urban slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It describes the results of active screening of household members for tuberculosis. The study included almost 10,000 participants who were all asked for...
Data on ART outcomes as well as prevalence and incidence of transmitted and acquired HIVDR are scarce in Rwanda. We describe HIVDR at baseline as well as treatment outcomes and acquired HIVDR one year after ART initiation in a cohort of antiretroviral–naïve HIV patients initiating...
Emily Gustafsson-Wright and Onno Schellekens recently published a Brookings working paper titled Achieving Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria One State at a Time: A Public-Private Partnership Community-Based Health Insurance Model. [PDF] Download the paper The paper discusses the topic of universal health coverage in the context of...
Smear microscopy remains the cornerstone for the diagnosis of tuberculosis in resource limited setting, despite its know limited sensitivity. Several techniques have been proposed to increase the sensitivity, including concentration of the specimen. The current study included 915 TB-suspects and showed that sensitivity of the smear-microscopy...
High seroprevalence of HBV and HCV infection in HIV-infected adults in Kigali, Rwanda. HBV and HCV co-infection(s) in HIV patients has negative impact on the outcome of hepatitis and complicates the management of HIV infection. This paper addresses the prevalence and incidence of hepatitis B virus...
In Current HIV/AIDS Reports, AIGHD’s Deputy Director, Science, Catherine Hankins, writes that future trends in the global HIV epidemic will be determined by the actions of individuals, couples, and communities. Dr. Hankins explains: “Ultimately, it will be policy makers, implementers, civil society, and funders that...
Increasing Tuberculosis Notification Rates Among Young Adults are Not Associated with Migration in Da Nang, Vietnam. In this paper Edine Tiemersma, epidemiologist with KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation and AIGHD, investigates the role of migration in the recent increase in tuberculosis (TB) case rates among young adults in...