“A potentially cheaper and faster method for diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) has been developed by researchers” at the University of Basel, Switzerland, “who hope to test it in Tanzania,” according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology last week, SciDev.Net reports. “The lack of a cheap, quick and accurate test makes it hard to control the TB epidemic, which claims millions of lives every year in developing countries,” according to the news service.

“The new method … uses a microcalorimeter to detect heat produced by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB, on a growth medium,” SciDev.Net writes.  “But Ruth McNerney, who studies pathogen biology and diagnostics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, and is a member of the Stop TB Partnership’s working group on new diagnostics, told SciDev.Net: ‘I don’t think this test has any added value as a TB diagnostic test in developing countries where microbiology culture facilities for TB are rare'” because “‘[t]he study does not confirm the presence of bacteria, only the fact that something is growing, and you would then need to do a confirmatory test,’ she said,” the news service reports (Zorlu, 8/30).