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Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions

Rapid, sensitive, accurate and portable diagnostics are a mainstay of modern medicine. Tuberculosis is a disease that has been with us since time immemorial and, despite the fact that it can be treated and cured, it still remains the world's biggest infectious killer, taking the lives of millio...

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Autores principales: MacGregor-Fairlie, Michael, Wilkinson, Samuel, Besra, Gurdyal S., Goldberg Oppenheimer, Pola
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Portland Press Ltd. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33258943
http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/ETLS20200335
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author MacGregor-Fairlie, Michael
Wilkinson, Samuel
Besra, Gurdyal S.
Goldberg Oppenheimer, Pola
author_facet MacGregor-Fairlie, Michael
Wilkinson, Samuel
Besra, Gurdyal S.
Goldberg Oppenheimer, Pola
author_sort MacGregor-Fairlie, Michael
collection PubMed
description Rapid, sensitive, accurate and portable diagnostics are a mainstay of modern medicine. Tuberculosis is a disease that has been with us since time immemorial and, despite the fact that it can be treated and cured, it still remains the world's biggest infectious killer, taking the lives of millions annually. There have been important developments in the diagnostic devices for tuberculosis however, these are often prone to error, expensive, lack the necessary sensitivity or accuracy and, crucially, not sufficiently portable and thus not applicable in the remote, rural areas, where they are most needed. Modern solutions have been emerging in the past decade, seeking to overcome many of the inhibiting issues in this field by utilising recent advances in molecular biology, genetics and sequencing or even completely ‘reinventing the wheel’, by developing novel and unprecedented diagnostic techniques. In this mini review, the issues and challenges arising from the historical methods of diagnosing tuberculosis are discussed, followed by outlaying their particular lack of appropriateness for regions of the world where tuberculosis still remains endemic. Subsequently, more recent developments of new methods and technological advancements as ‘modern weapons’ in the battle to defeat this disease and associated challenges are reviewed, and finally an outlook is presented, highlighting the future of the modern solutions under development, which are envisioned to lay the platform for improvements in delivering timely intervention, reduce immense expense and burden on healthcare systems worldwide, while saving millions of lives and eventually, may enable the eradication of this ancient disease.
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spelling pubmed-77336692020-12-18 Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions MacGregor-Fairlie, Michael Wilkinson, Samuel Besra, Gurdyal S. Goldberg Oppenheimer, Pola Emerg Top Life Sci Review Articles Rapid, sensitive, accurate and portable diagnostics are a mainstay of modern medicine. Tuberculosis is a disease that has been with us since time immemorial and, despite the fact that it can be treated and cured, it still remains the world's biggest infectious killer, taking the lives of millions annually. There have been important developments in the diagnostic devices for tuberculosis however, these are often prone to error, expensive, lack the necessary sensitivity or accuracy and, crucially, not sufficiently portable and thus not applicable in the remote, rural areas, where they are most needed. Modern solutions have been emerging in the past decade, seeking to overcome many of the inhibiting issues in this field by utilising recent advances in molecular biology, genetics and sequencing or even completely ‘reinventing the wheel’, by developing novel and unprecedented diagnostic techniques. In this mini review, the issues and challenges arising from the historical methods of diagnosing tuberculosis are discussed, followed by outlaying their particular lack of appropriateness for regions of the world where tuberculosis still remains endemic. Subsequently, more recent developments of new methods and technological advancements as ‘modern weapons’ in the battle to defeat this disease and associated challenges are reviewed, and finally an outlook is presented, highlighting the future of the modern solutions under development, which are envisioned to lay the platform for improvements in delivering timely intervention, reduce immense expense and burden on healthcare systems worldwide, while saving millions of lives and eventually, may enable the eradication of this ancient disease. Portland Press Ltd. 2020-12-11 2020-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7733669/ /pubmed/33258943 http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/ETLS20200335 Text en © 2020 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society and the Royal Society of Biology and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . Open access for this article was enabled by the participation of University of Birmingham in an all-inclusive Read & Publish pilot with Portland Press and the Biochemical Society under a transformative agreement with JISC.
spellingShingle Review Articles
MacGregor-Fairlie, Michael
Wilkinson, Samuel
Besra, Gurdyal S.
Goldberg Oppenheimer, Pola
Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
title Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
title_full Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
title_fullStr Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
title_full_unstemmed Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
title_short Tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
title_sort tuberculosis diagnostics: overcoming ancient challenges with modern solutions
topic Review Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733669/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33258943
http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/ETLS20200335
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