Moving toward Tuberculosis Elimination. Critical Issues for Research in Diagnostics and Therapeutics for Tuberculosis Infection
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.