“The value of new TB studies must never be underestimated,” said Derick Esterhuizen, provincial manager at the South African National Tuberculosis Association (SANTA) in the Western Cape.
Stellenbosch University (SU) was recently awarded a R128 million grant by the US National Institutes of Health to investigate new tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics and predictive tests in a multinational research study.
These tests are due to commence in October 2020, said Gerhard Walzl, principal investigator of The Immunology Research Group that will conduct the study over a period of five years.
The research group, within the Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics at SU, will enroll a total of 4 000 participants in the study, said Walzl, who is also the executive head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at SU.
The South African TB Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) at the University of Cape Town, the Medical Research Council in The Gambia, Uganda and Vietnam, Colorado State University, the Leiden University Medical Centre in Europe and Linq, a grants management company in Germany, also form part in the study, Walzl said.
(Left to right) Gerhard Walzl together with professor Novel Chegou, who worked on many aspects of the project. PHOTO:Gerhard Walzl
“We want to test the performance of novel TB assays in cohorts that include adults, children, and people living with HIV,” said Walzl. “We will evaluate the tests for the ability to diagnose active TB, to predict TB treatment outcome and to identify people with a close TB contact who are at highest risk for progression to active TB.”
According to Tom Scriba, principal investigator at SATVI, current TB diagnostics are not able to effectively reach all TB patients and a very large proportion of patients are not found or treated, resulting in a late diagnosis.
Improved diagnostic tests that can be done easily and quickly, which can reach TB patients even before they have serious lung disease, would allow for early treatment and will dramatically improve the ability to control TB, said Scriba.
“We hope to identify at least one new and innovative diagnostic test that can identify people who will develop TB before they are sick, so that they can be treated before the devastating consequences of TB take hold,” Scriba said.
According to Walzl, the researchers will compare the performance of the new fingerstick blood point-of-care-tests with the standard TB tests.
“We will also apply the tests during treatment for TB and evaluate whether the tests can predict who is at high risk for a poor outcome. In addition, we will follow close contacts of TB cases for one year to evaluate the ability of the tests to predict progression to TB in this high-risk group,” Walzl said.
The study will also look at the effect of HIV and diabetes on the TB tests, he added.
“The value of new TB studies must never be underestimated,” said Derick Esterhuizen, provincial manager at the South African National Tuberculosis Association (SANTA) in the Western Cape.
According to Esterhuizen, TB remains a killer disease even though it is curable.
It should become easier for people who experience flu-like symptoms to be tested before it is too late, Esterhuizen said.
“We need better tools to stop TB,” says Gerhard Walzl, principal investigator and executive head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Stellenbosch University. INFOGRAPHIC: Anke Nothnagel.