G'day all,
Came across this news report about a new tuberculosis test. I'm not a holder of CST but i do remember they were into tuberculosis testing. Hope this helps someone, after all this site is supposed to be all about sharing information and creating wealth isn't it?
If this article will have no effect on the price please let us all know.
regards- pokerboy
work, I tried it once........ didnt care for it!
"A new DNA test has been developed to detect tuberculosis in a matter of hours.
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff in Leicester
The breakthrough has come from scientists involved in managing an outbreak in Leicester, UK, last year.
About 300 pupils at the Crown Hills Community College in the city were infected with the bacterium after a 14-year-old boy was misdiagnosed with asthma.
It took 10 months before his condition was properly recognised, by which time others in the school had begun to fall ill.
The test, which should aid the management of future outbreaks, was discussed at the British Association's science festival in the city.
Genetic pay-off
TB, which is a disease of the respiratory system, affects as many as 7,000 people in England and Wales every year. Symptoms include a cough that refuses to go away, unexplained weight loss, severe night sweats and lethargy.
A long course of antibiotics is usually sufficient to cure a patient, but an early diagnosis is greatly desired.
The traditional test, known as the tuberculin skin test (TST), or Heaf test, can take weeks and can give false-positive results in people who have been given the anti-TB BCG vaccine, or exposed to other similar types of microbes.
Professor Mike Barer, of Leicester University, used data from the decoded genome of the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis to search for markers that could be used to detect the germ in patients in just two to three hours.
Action plan
"It's the beginning of the pay-off in genetic technology for the control of infectious diseases. A huge amount of money was invested in sequencing M. tuberculosis. This is really a very direct application which has been of day to day use to practising physicians."
Such new DNA tests will form a key part of the UK Government's TB Action Plan to be launched next year. The tests will be used in a wider screening programme and there will also be a new system for fast-track treatment.
The key target for 2003 will be to ensure 90% of people diagnosed with the disease are treated and cured, and that notification rates in all UK ethnic groups steadily decline.
But Dr Philip Monk, of Leicester Health Authority, said that with TB increasing worldwide, these targets would not be easy to achieve.
Worldwide problem
"TB isn't going away. It is very much a resurgent problem facing us in Leicestershire and other areas in this country, which is a worry because this is a disease we thought we had conquered; we thought it had gone forever. But it is definitely staging a major comeback."
According to the World Health Organization, TB infection is currently spreading worldwide at the rate of one person per second.
It kills more young people and adults than any other infectious disease and is the world's biggest killer of women. In 1993 the WHO declared TB "a global health emergency".
The WHO predicts that by 2020 nearly one billion people will be newly infected with TB, of whom 70 million will die.
Last year, scientists from Oxford University developed a test that was based on analysing blood samples for the presence of immune system cells that are activated by a protein produced by the TB bacterium.
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