News & Events
-
How the PredictTB Student Presentation Session fits into the project’s broader Capacity Building work
Science communication is becoming an increasingly important skill to master for people involved in science. In the context of PredictTB’s Work Package 4 – Capacity Building, Networking, Dissemination – a presentation session was organized on October 7, 2021. The session provided a platform for early-career researchers in the PredictTB consortium... -
PredictTB Annual Meeting 2021
The PredictTB consortium held its fourth annual meeting virtually on October 13-14, 2021. The goal of the meeting was to take stock of the project’s progress over the last year and make plans for the final nine months ahead – the project will come to an end in July 2022. While on the first day of the meeting the whole consortium gathered, the... -
MERM: A device to aid patient treatment adherence
Adherence to prescribed treatment is a critical component for tuberculosis (TB) patients’ prospect of cure. MERM, short for Medication Event Reminder-Monitor, is an ongoing sub-study of PredicTB that aims to aid patient treatment adherence. Each participant in the PredictTB study receives a MERM box, a device that stores the participants’ pills... -
World Tuberculosis Day 2021: The Clock Is Ticking
Today is World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, which is recognized on March 24 each year. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacillus that causes TB. The first World TB Day was held one century later – in 1982. World TB Day serves to raise public awareness about the devastating... -
A look ahead to what 2021 holds for PredictTB
Four years into the project, PredictTB is entering a new phase. In 2021, the project hopes to begin preliminary data analyses. Over the next one and a half years, PredictTB’s scientists will look at datasets from the study’s more than 600 participants. Simultaneously, new patients will be recruited for PredictTB’s MRI sub-study. This article... -
Evaluate4mTB: Taps the power of artificial intelligence to automate analysis of patient scans
Evaluate4mTB, a sub-study of PredictTB, is developing and testing a new machine learning algorithm to automate the analysis of tuberculosis patient scans. Led by Dr Stephanus Malherbe from Stellenbosch University, Evaluate4mTB aims to complement its parent study by providing additional analyses of scans from all PredictTB’s 516 participants,... -
WHO publishes report on the progress towards global TB targets
Last week, two years after the UN High Level Meeting (UNHLM) on Tuberculosis, the WHO and partners released a progress report to take stock of progress made in meeting the WHO’s End TB strategy, Sustainable Development Goals, and UNHLM targets for TB. -
ASSURE: Assessing the potential correlation between altered MTB cells and a patient’s risk for relapse
ASSURE aims to assess if TB patients who are considered clinically cured have completely achieved sterilisation at the end of treatment. Dr Caroline Beltran, ASSURE Study Lead, is looking for the presence of metabolically altered TB bacteria in sputum samples from PredictTB patients who have completed anti-TB treatment and the potential...