Keshavjee S, Amanullah F, Cattamanchi A, Chaisson R, Dobos KM, Fox GJ, Gendelman HE, Gordon R, Hesseling A, Le Van H, Kampmann B, Kana B, Khuller G, Lewinsohn DM, Lewinsohn DA, Lin PL, Lu LL, Maartens G, Owen A, Protopopova M, Rengarajan J, Rubin E, Salgame P, Schurr E, Seddon JA, Swindells S, Tobin DM, Udwadia Z, Walzl G, Srinivasan S, Rustomjee R, Nahid P. Moving toward Tuberculosis Elimination. Critical Issues for Research in Diagnostics and Therapeutics for Tuberculosis Infection. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2019 Mar 1;199(5):564-571. doi: 10.1164/rccm.201806-1053PP. PMID: 30335466; PMCID: PMC6396859.
Tuberculosis (TB) has surpassed HIV to become the leading infectious killer of adults globally, causing almost 2 million deaths annually (1). Although this airborne disease has been treatable since 1948, global rates of TB have dropped less than 2% per year; an estimated 10 million incident cases continue to occur annually, including 1 million in children. Although transmission of active disease is an important driver of the epidemic, the seedbed that feeds the epidemic is the more than 2 billion people estimated to have TB infection, 5% to 10% of whom will progress to active disease during their lifetime. Although any successful strategy aimed at TB elimination needs to address this reservoir of TB infection worldwide, much remains to be understood about host and pathogen factors that can be used to identify increased risk for progression to disease and intervened on to prevent progression from occurring.
The Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S. NIH, and the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery–Dubai convened a group of scientists and stakeholders on September 28 and 29, 2017, to address knowledge gaps that affect our ability to rapidly find and treat individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis who are most likely to progress to active disease. The meeting identified a number of efforts underway to address this important gap in the collective ability to stop the global TB epidemic. Here, we review and outline the priority areas for research, diagnosis, and treatment of TB infection that emerged from the meeting, building on recent reviews in this area.