MIMIC
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Multifunctional Integrated Microsystem for rapid point-of-care TB Identification
IRAS ID
139660
Contact name
Stephen Morris-Jones
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
Research summary
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infection prevalent throughout the world and is responsible for a significant amount of morbidity and mortality. In the UK it continues to be a primary health problem of the poor and vulnerable.\nThe mechanisms by which TB evades the human immune system may cause either active disease or asymptomatic infection, and spreads from person to person are all poorly understood. This is in part due to difficulties in investigating a potentially highly infectious organism and the fact that there is a lack of good animal models for TB. TB therapy has changed little since the 1980’s, yet the increasing incidence of drug resistance currently means that treatment courses may last as long as two years and there is a real prospect that this infection may once again become untreatable. \nDiagnostics tests for early active disease and latent infection are have very poor sensitivity thereby limiting the opportunity for prompt and effective disease control. \nA better understanding of the immune processes that occur in this infection will allow the design of new diagnostic tests for TB and potentially offer novel therapeutic strategies. This study will involve taking samples taken from patients with latent TB, active TB and also appropriate controls in order to investigate the specific immune responses. These responses will be used to investigate a panel of antigens in or to develop rapid TB identification point of care tests.
REC name
East of England - Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/EE/0097
Date of REC Opinion
26 Mar 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion