Thomson Reuters Foundation: New TB mutations could transform tests for drug resistance
Taane Clark, professor of genomics and global health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and alumni staff of LSHTM; and Ruth McNerney, LSHTM alumni and honorary associate professor at University of Cape Town

“…Our inability to detect drug resistance has serious implications. … A newly published paper in Nature Genetics … looked at resistance to 14 drugs using bacteria that had been isolated from TB patients from more than thirty countries … While the study confirmed previously described resistance mutations it also increased the number of mutations associated with resistance to TB drugs. … These findings will support the pharmaceutical industry in developing more accurate rapid molecular tests for drug resistance, inform new ‘whole genome’ approaches being rolled out to profile TB bacteria for clinical decision making, and also provide important new data and insight for the TB research community. The long-term goal of course is to ensure patients receive effective treatment and cure themselves of TB, but that will also have the crucial knock-on effect of preventing the further spread of resistance…” (1/22).