Queen Mary research leads the way in tackling tuberculosis

March 24 marks World TB Day, raising the awareness of this devastating disease and the global efforts being made to end the TB epidemic. Named by the World Health Organization as ‘the world’s deadliest infectious disease’, TB caused over 10 million people worldwide to fall ill and resulted in 1.25 million deaths in just 2023 alone.

TB is an infectious disease caused by bacteria, which is predominantly spread by coughing. The disease most commonly affects the lungs, but it can affect other parts of the body too, including the spine and the brain. Delays in diagnosis can cause life-long issues for patients and have devastating physical and mental effects, and even death. A number of patients in East London die of TB each year, despite world class treatment being available.

Clinical academics from Queen Mary’s Wolfson Institute of Population Health and Blizard Institute are at the forefront of research into TB. In the last year, researchers have reported on studies examining the incidence, treatment, and longer-term impacts of TB infections on different populations around the world. Most recently, Dr Dominik Zenner, Clinical Reader in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, has examined the geographical and drug resistance trends of TB within Europe, where almost one third of all people with TB were born in or have citizenship from a country outside the EU/ EEA. In a further opinion piece, published in The Lancet, Dr Zenner examined the post-tuberculosis health and morbidity in high income countries.

On reflecting on his research into this devastating disease, Dr Zenner said: “My passion to mitigate health inequalities and my academic focus on health needs in underserved populations locally and globally explains my interest in TB. My work seeks to identify pragmatic, feasible, effective and cost-effective ways of early detection and control of this disease which is still the most important cause of death of any infectious disease globally.”

Queen Mary also offers the only postgraduate specialist course in TB in the UK, which is based at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health.

A new centre of excellence for TB in East London

Building on the expertise of TB researchers from Queen Mary and clinicians from Barts Health NHS Trust, a new centre of excellence for the study and treatment of TB is being established in East London. With £4.63m funded by Barts Charity, the Queen Mary & Barts Health Tuberculosis Centre  will push forward new scientific discoveries in the lab and drive innovation in the services available to local TB patients.

The new centre will conduct research in a purpose-built laboratory in the Blizard Institute, where work will continue to improve our scientific understanding of TB bacteria and how the human immune system responds to them. Specific projects will focus on:

• developing a new blood test to detect TB infection
• understanding why some patients have ‘flare-ups’ of their symptoms after starting treatment
• investigating genetic factors that influence why people from South Asian backgrounds living in East London may be more likely to be infected by TB

Clinical innovations in how TB is diagnosed and treated will be made available to local patients of Barts Health, including quicker, less invasive ways to collect samples from people with suspected lung TB to reduce delays in starting treatment. The world’s first post-TB clinic to help and treat TB survivors experiencing long-term complications from this debilitating disease will also be established.

Professor Adrian Martineau, Clinical Professor of Respiratory Infection and Immunity at Queen Mary, said: “TB is a major infectious disease that is particularly common in East London. Our vision is to provide step-changes in scientific understanding, diagnosis and treatment of TB, that will be relevant not just to our diverse local community, but also to the 10 million people who fall ill with TB around the world every year.”

Find out more about the new TB centre of excellence on the Barts Charity website, or find out more about recent TB research in the Faculty by clicking on the titles, below.

• Tuberculosis: an under-recognized cause of COPD? Solving the post-TB lung disease puzzle, one piece at a time
• Post-TB lung disease: keep going beyond TB!
• Tuberculosis in people of Ukrainian origin in the European Union and the European Economic Area, 2019 to 2022
• The burden and natural history of cardiac pathology at TB diagnosis in a high-HIV prevalence district in Zambia: protocol for the TB-Heart study.
• Ultra for diagnosing tuberculosis at bronchoscopy: thoughts on practical applications.
• The treatment of latent tuberculosis infection in migrants in primary care versus secondary care.
• Imaging and Circulating Biomarker-Defined Cardiac Pathology in Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Systematic Review. 
• Tuberculosis in adult migrants in Europe: a TBnet consensus statement.