11/11 Reading

When reading this article about the difficulties associated with diagnosis in low-resource areas, I was particularly intrigued with the tuberculosis issue. Like many of the other diseases mentioned in the article, drug resistance is a factor that may limit the effectiveness of anti-TB campaigns and interventions. An accurate diagnostic measure would limit the impact of this by reducing the number of people treated with antibiotics due to misdiagnosis.

HIV infection is another cause of ineffective interventions. People with HIV may experience tuberculosis as an opportunistic infection, and diagnosing the TB without the HIV is not a long-term solution for infected individuals.

Modern diagnostic methods with regard to TB rely on chemical and molecular replication of sputum cultures. In most less-developed countries, direct sputum cultures are used to test for TB, but are less effective because of the unreliability of the culturing and difficulty in obtaining enough sputum to test. Chemical replication is necessary to magnify the samples, and these techniques are often beyond the scope of laboratory capabilities in low-income countries.

Some focus of the biomedical industry and public-health NGOs is on improving laboratory systems in developing countries, rather than working on the individual diagnostic tests themselves. Working to improve transportation infrastructure from field clinics to laboratory facilities requires the coordination of cold-storage transportation, bookkeeping and inter-clinic communication over potentially very long distances.

Ramsay, Andrew, and Anthony D. Harris. "The clinical value of new diagnostic tools for tuberculosis." F1000 Medicine Reports 1.36 (2009). Faculty of 1000 Medicine. Medicine Reports Ltd., 29 Apr. 2009. Web. 10 Nov. 2009. .