• There hasn’t been much progress in diagnosing TB in children in terms of diagnostics.
• If successful, TB will be detected in less invasive specimen types, which will highly contribute to an increase in diagnosis in children.
Experts from the Kenya Medical Research Institute are conducting clinical trials for two promising TB vaccines for adults and children.
The research is being conducted through Kemri Centre for Respiratory Diseases Research (CRDR). The research involves harnessing technology in diagnosis, clinical drugs and vaccine therapeutics towards better and lasting solutions to TB.
The phase III trials on infants in Nairobi and Siaya counties has seen at least 1,500 participants recruited for the vaccine candidate from the Serum Institute of India.
Videlis Nduba, a research scientist at Kemri said on Friday there hasn’t been much progress in diagnosing TB in children, and if the two work, they would change the way TB in children is treated.
According to the researcher, children tend to have very low TB levels in their bodies, scientifically known as paucibacillary disease. This makes it very difficult to prove that a small child has TB.
“This is noble diagnostic work and we are looking at two key diagnostics, one is you take a very small sample from a child just as a way of background,” Nduba said.
“There is a way that you could just get a very small sample from a child and be able to test them and be able to confirm they have TB. That would be groundbreaking as a noble technology in diagnosing TB in children.”
The study seeks to devise the best ways to diagnose TB in children using a system that will be able to confirm the presence of the disease in small amounts of blood obtained.
This according to experts, is done by checking for extracellular vesicles as well as accessing the presence of TB cell-free DNA in urine and blood.
If successful, TB will be detected in less invasive specimen types, which will highly contribute to an increase in diagnosis in children.
Additionally, researchers are also following progress on another Phase III vaccine clinical trials for adolescents and adults.
Kemri participated in Phase II trials of the m72 candidate TB vaccine that recruited approximately 3,500 adults in several African countries.
The development of this vaccine candidate was taken up by the Gates Medical Research Institute (GMRI) and Kemri, if selected by the sponsor, is geared-up to participate in a Phase III licensure trials to be conducted in many other countries in Africa.
Earlier research at Kemri reduced the treatment period from 18 to six months. Kemri estimates that the disease is responsible for at least six per cent of all deaths in the country.
“Kenya is moving towards shortening this treatment period further to four months and the institute hopes to support the National TB Control programme in rolling out this new treatment programme,” Kemri said in a statement.
These vaccines have a likelihood to be adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and used in protection for TB.
The researchers are also using modern technology by investigating a cough sense, a software that is able to distinguish between a TB cough and any other cough.
This, the experts say, is going to change the dynamics of diagnosing a TB patient.
Today, TB remains an epidemic in most parts of the world, causing the deaths of nearly 1.5 million people each year, mostly in developing countries.
TB is still a major public health problem globally, with WHO ranking Kenya among the high burden TB countries.
Kenya on Friday joined the rest of the world in marking World Tuberculosis Day.
The day is commemorated every year on March 24 and is designed to build public awareness about the disease.