University team’s TB treatment hope

New African strain of disease analysed

HEALTH: Scientists from a the University of Bradford have taken a major step towards finding a new treatment for tuberculosis in groundbreaking research, after discovering a new variant of the disease.

SCIENTISTS FROM a university in Yorkshire have taken a major step towards finding a new treatment for tuberculosis in groundbreaking research.

A team of researchers from the University of Bradford have had a significant breakthrough in the search for a vaccine after discovering a new variant of the disease in Africa.

The new strain, known as Lineage 8, was found by chance in Rwanda. It has taken researchers two years to sequence and analyse its genome.

Conor Meehan, one of the lead researchers, and a lecturer in molecular microbiology from the department of life sciences, at the University of Bradford, described the discovery as a “missing link” in the evolution of one of the world’s oldest and most deadly pathogens.

He said: “Tuberculosis is one of the oldest pathogens to affect humans.

“The pathogen has several different strains or ‘lineages’. We have known about six lineages for over a decade and a seventh was discovered in Ethiopia just over five years ago.

“Now we have found an eighth lineage in Rwanda and Uganda, which seems to be much older that the other lineages and so we think it could be a missing link in the evolution of what causes TB.”

The work was a collaboration between the University of Bradford, the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland, the CNRS at the Institut Pasteur de Lille and the Rwanda Biomedical Centre.

Scientists took two years to synthesise and analyse the new genome, confirming its lineage status. In the process, they also discovered that while the strain is already resistant to modern treatments, it seems to infect far fewer people than other strains.

Mr Meehan said: “We all want to get to a vaccine and there are hints in this if it’s not spreading as much, it’s a strain we can work with towards achieving that end.”

He added: “There is still a lot of work to do in terms of finding out where TB came from but this discovery takes us closer to that.”

Although only discovered at the end of the 19th century, evidence suggests tuberculosis has been infecting humans for thousands of years.