Source : Thailand Medical News Nov 30, 2019 5 years, 3 weeks, 2 days, 9 hours, 30 minutes ago
Study that was published by Australian researchers in early 2019 now going into human trials starting 2020.
Medical research led by the Centenary Institute in Sydney has found a brand new target for treating drug-resistant
tuberculosis; our scientists have uncovered that the
tuberculosis bacterium hijacks platelets from the body's blood clotting system to weaken our immune systems.
TB or
Tuberculosis is far from eradicated around the world and still infects more than 1,400 people per year in Australia and millions worldwide. Antibiotic resistant
tuberculosis is particularly deadly and expensive to treat, costing up to $250,000 to treat a single case in Australia. Scientists at the Centenary Institute have been working on new ways to treat
tuberculosis by increasing the effectiveness of the immune system.
Utilizing the zebrafish model of
tuberculosis, the researchers used fluorescent microscopy to observe the build-up of clots and activation of platelets around sites of infection. Senior author and head of the Centenary's Immune-Vascular Interactions laboratory, Dr. Stefan Oehlers, says "the zebrafish gives us literal insight into disease processes by watching cells interacting in real time".
Based on their hunch that these platelets were being tricked by the infection into getting in the way of the body's immune system, the researchers treated infections with anti-platelet drugs, including widely available
aspirin, and were able to prevent hijacking and allow the body to control infection better.
"This is the first time that platelets have been found to worsen
tuberculosis in an animal model. It opens up the possibility that anti-platelet drugs could be used to help the immune system fight off drug resistant
TB." commented Dr. Elinor Hortle, lead author of the paper published in
The Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Research Officer in Centenary's Immune-Vascular Interactions laboratory, during an interview with
Thailand Medical News.
There are over 1.2 million Australians living with latent
tuberculosis, a non-infectious form of
TB that puts them at risk of developing the active disease. "Our study provides more crucial evidence that widely available
aspirin could be used to treat patients with severe
tuberculosis infection and save lives," says Dr. Hortle.
The research is now moving into human trials starting as early as 2020.
Reference : Elinor Hortle et al, Thrombocyte inhibition restores protective immunity to mycobacterial infection in zebrafish, The Journal of Infectious Diseases (2019). DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiz110
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