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Badger cull reduced TB in cattle

Fri, 05/28/2010 - 22:33 by Inderjit Singh

Exeter -- A controlled culling of badgers reduced the incidence of tuberculosis in cattle by 37 percent, researchers in England said.

Government researchers analyzed data from farms in England where Badgers were killed between 1998 and 2005, The Times of London reported Friday.

The researchers also found little spread of tuberculosis in areas adjacent to the fields where the culling occurred, which dispelled a belief that culling made the disease worse.

About 1,500 landowners have petitioned the British government to begin killing badgers this fall in Devon and Cornwall, which have been particularly hard hit by outbreaks of TB in cattle.

Latent TB activation factors proposed

Tue, 03/30/2010 - 22:48 by Inderjit Singh

Ithaca -- A U.S. medical scientist studying factors that trigger latent tuberculosis says his findings might lead to innovative strategies for treating the disease.

Cornell University Professor David Russell and his team demonstrated TB-causing bacteria are able to hijack fat metabolism in the host to drive the progression of the disease. They showed Mycobacterium tuberculosis is able to stimulate macrophages -- the immune cells the bacterium infects -- to accumulate fat droplets, turning them into "foamy" cells. That cellular transformation, the researchers said, can trigger a reawakening of the TB infection from its latent state.

Discovery reported in fight against TB

Tue, 10/06/2009 - 19:54 by Inderjit Singh

Ames -- A team of U.S. scientists has identified a way of possibly neutralizing an enzyme that helps make tuberculosis resistant to a human's natural defense system.

The researchers, led by Iowa State University Associate Professor Reuben Peters, said their findings might someday lead to a cure for tuberculosis. The disease, caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis microbe, kills 1.5 million to 2 million people worldwide annually.

Peters, along with scientists from the University of Illinois and Cornell University, said in most infections, the human body defends itself with macrophage cells that engulf and destroy the foreign microbes, such as the Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Two-drug therapy offers hope for drug-resistant TB

Fri, 02/27/2009 - 16:04 by Jamie Anderson

New York, February 27: Meropenem and clavulanate, two FDA-approved antibiotics, when used in combination, appear to offer great promise against the deadly, extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), a new American study claims.