Exciting New Development in TB Control

Dr Ruth McNerney is a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Britain’s national school of public health and an internationally-recognised centre of excellence in tropical medicine research. She has been closely involved in the Ethiopian trials and comments as follows on the potential of the TB Breathalyser:

“Although we have effective drugs against tuberculosis, it remains one of the world’s most serious public heath problems and kills more adults than any other single infectious agent. We urgently need ways of detecting infectious pulmonary cases early in the infection before the disease has a chance to spread.

“Current tests are slow, clumsy, require specialist laboratory facilities and are only effective for detecting advanced disease. The RBS Breathalyser test is unique in that it does not require the collection of sputum samples, which are characteristic of advanced disease. That it does not need facilities such as electricity or running water and can be used outside of the hospital clinic means it could be used to screen people without them needing to visit the health centre.

“The RBS TB Breathalyser test is an exciting new development in TB control. It will help us learn more about when patients become infectious and how long they remain a risk to other people. In a small study in Ethiopia we used a prototype of the test to identify TB patients within ten minutes. It is important that further studies are undertaken to ascertain the sensitivity and specificity of the test. If the TB Breathalyser proves sufficiently sensitive then it might have a major impact on the way we control tuberculosis.”