Webinar today – TB immunity from diagnostics to vaccination
Today, Thursday, January 26 @16:00 – 17:00 CET comes a TBnet webinar with Simone Joosten, Leiden University Medical Center. Find out more about TB immunity in connection to vaccines and diagnostics!
A discussion with the expert panel and the audience will be 20 min - come and ask your questions.
On the same link, @17:00 Ilaria Motta will chair a short session with a clinical case: TB and glomerulonephritis by Simone Tunesi - recently posted at the TBnet Circle – steroids or not?
Here is the link to the webinar and the clinical session:
Electricity generator to a Ukrainian TB/HIV lab – a successful fundraiser by TBnet and INNOVA4TB
A joint campaign by TBnet and INNOVA4TB has so far raised almost 3000 euro for electricity generator to the regional diagnostic TB/HIV laboratory, Odessa Ukraine.
The funds are donated by 53 people through a gofundme platform:
Many thanks to all who donated and shared the fundraiser. The collected funds cover about 20% of the costs of the 50kW generator. The campaign will continue till the end of January.
If you considered donation to this fundraising - just do it - supporting the Centre for Socially Significant Diseases and their laboratory is a good investment in health in Europe.
We appreciate the informative and good-looking campaign posters by Raquel Villar Hernandez!
Thanks to ptbnet members for donations from tuberculosis professionals of Kharkiv, Ukraine!
At the start of the Russian war against Ukraine, ptbnet started a campaign to raise funds for helping to Ukrainian tuberculosis patients and tuberculosis experts. TBnet has joined the campaign. During 2022, part of the raised funds was transferred to Kharkiv, Ukraine. The contact with Kharkiv is maintained through Olha Konstantynovska, a TBnet member, a physician affiliated to TB dispensary (Director Dr Iryna Kalmykova) and Associate Professor, Karazin National University. Olha and her colleagues - doctors Tetiana Synenko and Olha Volobuyeva - live in Kharkiv and stay committed to their clinical work and teaching. They made possible the transfer of the funds from ptbnet in collaboration with Marc Tebruegge.
Dr Konstantynovska and Dr Synenko, Kharkiv Ukraine are grateful for the help provided
The funds provided through ptbnet were used for direct needs of the patients: food, fuel and special type of the breast milk substitute for a premature baby with congenital tuberculosis and stoma. Folke Brinkmann, ptbnet Chair organized an online consultancy for the baby to discuss the best available treatment options.
The official letters of gratitude to the ptbnet members provided the Regional tuberculosis hospital, Kharkiv, Ukraine and Kharkiv Karazin National University
News from TBnet partners: WHO CC for Research and Training in Management of Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis, Latvia (WHO CC Latvia) has conducted a training course in Poland
Within the framework of the collaboration between the World Health Organization Country Office in Poland and WHO CC Latvia in support of the capacity building of national medical professionals working in the area of TB in Poland, Liga Kuksa, the TBnet Chair and WHO CC director was co-facilitating the course on WHO recommendations for diagnostics, treatment and clinical management of drug-resistant TB (Warsaw, January 23 – 25). This is the first of three courses planned in Warsaw together with the TB consultants from the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
The course on WHO recommendations for diagnostics,
treatment and clinical management of drug-resistant TB - Warsaw, January 23 – 25
The objectives of the project are to address the needs of refugees from Ukraine in Poland, including medical assistance and care for TB patients by strengthening the knowledge and skills of local TB service providers in TB patients' clinical and programmatic management in line with the latest WHO guidelines and recommendations.
As a part of this cooperation project, two more training courses will be conducted for Poland's TB specialists in Warsaw by March 2023, including training on effective health communication and improving the knowledge and skills of nurses, providing treatment and care to TB.
Meet TBnet partners: Department of Transplant and Infection Immunology, Saarland University, Germany
The department of transplant and infection immunology was founded in 2009 at the medical faculty of Saarland University to facilitate translational research between basic immunological research in infectious diseases and clinical disciplines. A major focus of the department in the characterization of antigen-specific immunity towards a variety of clinically relevant pathogens in both immunocompetent and immunocompromized patients. Apart from viral pathogens such as herpesviruses, BK polyomaviruses or more recently, SARS-CoV-2, the department is interested in advancing immune-based diagnostic assays towards better identification of individuals with latent or active infection with M. tuberculosis. The department includes mainly performs research but also has a diagnostic facility that enables rapid translation into the clinical practice.
Martina Sester in her laboratory photographed by Iris Maurer
Martina Sester, who is heading the department, is a professor in immunology who is a member oft he TBnet steering committee responsible for translational research since its foundation. Martina has coordinated „TBnet study #1“ on IGRA tests in immunocompromized patients, and the latest studies on the value of IGRAs in transplant recipients (TBnet study #52) and on a new generation IGRA in immunocompromized patients (TBnet study #54) have now closed recruitment and data collection.
She enjoyed performing these studies, as so many TBnet members were able to participate and make an active contribution towards reaching large sample sizes that individual studies are rarely able to achieve.
This is considered a particular value of our network and we are now eagerly looking forward to the final analyses and to discussion of the data within the TBnet community and beyond.
New paper based on TBnet data is published!
For those who are interested in prediction of TB disease using TST or IGRA - a usful paper is out in eClinicalMedicine!
Congrats to this great work to Yohhei Hamada, Frank van Leth, Jose Dominguez, Irene Lattore, Christoph Lange, Martina Sester, Molebogeng Rangakaa and other co-authors!
Predictive performance of interferon-gamma release assays and the tuberculin skin test for incident tuberculosis: an individual participant data meta-analysis:
