Researchers study HIV+ people who avoid tuberculosis infection

Five-year $11 million federal grant to study Africans at high risk of tuberculosis

W. Henry Boom (of the Tuberculosis Research Unit at Case) and his colleagues previously found that in urban Uganda, about 9% of people living in a home with someone with TB did not themselves become infected during two years of follow-up.

Similarly, in South Africa, they identified miners who did not become infected despite more than 20 years of working under conditions with the highest Mtb infection pressure in the world. In both Uganda and South Africa, some of these TB “resisters” were people living with HIV.

Boom and colleagues will screen as many as 12,500 people with a goal of identifying about 60 HIV-positive resisters. From there the researchers will sequence the DNA of the resisters. They hypothesize that the HIV-positive subjects will possess more of the unconventional T-cells than will analogous numbers of HIV-negative resisters and others serving as control groups.

http://thedaily.case.edu/news/researchers-receive-grant-to-understand-why-some-hiv-individuals-avoid-contracting-tuberculosis/

Learn more about the Tuberculosis Research Unit at http://www.case.edu/affil/tbru/