The World Health Organization unveiled on Monday a new
diagnostic test that will give doctors the possibility to discover multi drug-resistant
tuberculosis (MDR-TB) within hours instead of months.
The current method involves taking saliva samples, which
have to be incubated for as many as 60 days in order for microbacteria to grow
and be tested against different antibiotic compounds. Therefore, it takes up to
three months to discover MDR-TB. This is the main reason why only 2 percent of
MDR-TB cases worldwide are diagnosed and treated appropriately.
With the new molecular test, developed by Hain Lifescience
and Innogenetics, doctors will figure out from a simple patient’s saliva sample
whether tuberculosis bacteria can be treated with isoniazid and rifampicin, the
two main antibiotics used in treating the disease. This will make it easier to
treat and prevent the spread of tuberculosis, a contagious respiratory ailment
that kills an estimated 1.5 million people a year, director of the WHO's Stop
TB department, Dr. Mario Raviglione said, according to Reuters.
The infection is particularly dangerous for people suffering
from HIV/AIDS or for those whose immune system is weakened. That’s why errors
in prescribing antibiotics could turn fatal, as MDR-TB could turn in XDR-TB, an
untreatable form of tuberculosis, already found in
TB affects the lungs and can be transmitted by an infected
person in droplets through coughing, sneezing, singing and other activities. The
disease infected 9.2 million people in 2006, turning it into the world’s
second-most-fatal infectious disease after AIDS, the WHO said.
The WHO also announced the test will be available over the
next four years in more than a dozen countries, under a program supported by
the WHO’s partners UNITAID and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics. The
$26.1 million initiative will be available in