The global burden of tuberculosis (TB) is staggering—1.6 million people died from the disease in 2017 alone—and drug-resistant strains are a growing problem. New research, however, indicates that DNA sequencing may be an effective tool for identifying whether a patient’s TB is resistant to certain first-line drugs.
The study, led by the CRyPTIC Consortium and the 100,000 Genomes Project, analyzed more than 10,000 samples of Mycobacterium tuberculosis—the bacterium that causes TB in humans—from patients across 16 countries and showed that genome sequencing correctly predicted resistance to the first-line antibiotic isoniazid in almost all cases, according to an October 24, 2018 article in ContagionLive. The study also looked at other first-line TB drugs, including rifampin, ethambutol, and pyrazinamide, and correctly predicted the samples’ resistance to these drugs with a high degree of accuracy.
“The goal of this work is to develop whole-genome sequencing as an alternative to more time-consuming methods to diagnose drug-resistant tuberculosis,” said Megan Murray, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and one of the authors of the study. She said the new study shows that using sequencing technologies can be very accurate in identifying TB that is resistant to first-line drugs.
Read the ContagionLive article Can DNA Make the Grade in the Fight Against Drug-Resistant TB?