Government WHO promotes use of rapid TB test in poor countries
By Ben Wasserman
Jul 1, 2008 - 9:01:19 AM
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TUESDAY July 1, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- The World Health
Organization and its funding partners said they plan to launch a program to
distribute a DNA test that diagnoses multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in just
one or two days compared to weeks to months for the old-fashioned test to
complete the same diagnosis.
The new diagnostic test called a line-probe assay is manufactured
by Germany's Hain Lifescience GmbH based on a technology known as polymerase
chain reaction or PCR to identify genes responsible for resistance to two
first-line TB drugs rifampin and isoniazid.
The WHO and UNITAID, a multinational funding partnership,
said they will infuse $26.1 million in the program to promote the use of the
new test in 16 developing countries over the next four years starting with
Lesotho and Ethiopia.
The other countries include Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cote
d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Georgia, Indonesia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Moldova, Myanmar, Tajikistan, Ukraine,
Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, Reuters reported.
The WHO estimates only 2% of MDR-TB cases are diagnosed and
treated largely because of poor laboratory facility.
With the new DNA test, the WHO hopes to expand
the diagnosis rate to 15 %.
Mario
Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB Department, said $170 million is
needed to reach such a goal.
In poor countries, MDR-TB was suspected only after the
disease fails to respond to the standard treatment. It can take two months for
doctors to confirm a diagnosis of MDR-TB, according to BBC News. Doctors are
reluctant to give second-line antibiotics unless a diagnosis is made because of
concerns that these drugs would lead to a worse form of TB.
As a result, many patients, particularly HIV
patients die before the diagnosis.
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) is TB that is resistant
to at least two of the best first line anti-TB drugs, namely isoniazid and
rifampicin, which are used to treat all persons with the disease. The disease
sickened an estimated 9.2 million people and killed 1.7 million worldwide in
2006, according to the WHO.