Tuberculosis is an ancient disease that mutated and spread from cows to humans 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. It’s been detected in the bones of Egyptian mummies and has stricken many famous people from Florence Nightingale to Eleanor Roosevelt, WC Fields and Vivien Leigh. TB survivors include Desmond Tutu (who had it as a child), Judy Collins, Tom Jones, and Cat Stevens.
Today, TB poses a serious threat worldwide. About two billion people– one-third of the world’s population– are infected. Most have a dormant form that doesn’t spark any symptoms and isn’t contagious, but in 10% of cases, the disease becomes active and can be transmitted through the air by coughing, sneezing or even talking. If the active form goes untreated, half of those cases are fatal.
“Tuberculosis is the biggest killer of any infectious disease and it’s also the leading cause of death for people with AIDS,” reports Lee Reichman, MD, MPH, executive director, New Jersey Medical School Global Tuberculosis Institute and professor of preventive medicine, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. “Every year, it kills two million people worldwide. That’s an appalling tragedy because this disease is both preventable and curable.”
Early diagnosis and getting the right treatment are critical with the emergence of multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is now a “global epidemic” reports Dr. Reichman in his book, Timebomb (McGraw-Hill, 2003, with coauthor Janice Hopkins Tanne). MDR-TB affected 440,000 people in 2008, WHO estimates, and doesn’t respond to traditional drugs. Asia has been especially hard hit by the epidemic, with nearly half of the world’s MDR-TB cases estimated to occur in China and India.
GE scientists in Bangalore, India, Shanghai, China, and Niskayuna, New York are examining if existing technologies might be leveraged to provide point-of-care diagnostic tests. Although this effort is still in the early stages, the goal is to see if it’s possible to help providers in the field quickly determine if patients have TB, and if so, which strain, since treatment varies. Tools might include reactive paper, similar to materials used to collect newborns’ blood for screening tests, and computer assisted analysis.
Faster diagnosis would be a major breakthrough, says Dr. Reichman, who is not involved with the GE effort. “A rapid test could help control TB, since it continues to spread until patients are diagnosed, isolated and treated with the right drugs. I applaud GE for working to improve care of a disease that isn’t sexy or in the news because it mainly affects poor people in developing nations. Right now, the most commonly used test—the skin reaction test—is more than 100 years old. With TB killing two million people a year, advances are desperately needed.”
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For more information, read about WHO’s Stop TB Strategy. Its aim is to drastically reduce the disease’s global burden by improving access to diagnosis and treatment. The Mayo Clinic provides a background on tuberculosis symptoms, risk factors, care and prevention. GE’s recent “Future of Healthcare Technology” media event highlighted tuberculosis point-of-care diagnosis, optical imagining and the Smart Patient Room. Dr. Reichman’s book, Timebomb, is available at libraries.
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