Posted on March 26, 2001 at 3:17 p.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — UAB has established an International Tuberculosis Center (ITC) to conduct research, provide clinical services and promote educational initiatives to combat the spread of tuberculosis (TB). The World Health Organization estimates that there are 8-10 million new cases of TB worldwide each year.
“Alabama and the southeast United States have a good history of TB control,” says Dr. Nancy Dunlap, director of the ITC, “so it may surprise some people that TB is still a threat. We see some 300 cases per year in this state.”
People can unknowingly be infected with TB and carry the bacteria for years without showing any symptoms. If the disease flares up and becomes active, it becomes highly contagious and easily spread.
“We see patients who were infected 20, 30, even 50 years ago, when TB was more prevalent, who have never developed the active stage of the disease,” Dunlap says. “Then, when they do get active disease, we tend to see clusters of TB infection among those with whom they have contact.”
Dunlap says one of the strengths of UAB’s TB program is its ability to identify a particular strain of TB using DNA analysis — a technique known as “DNA fingerprinting.” The team has used the method to trace outbreaks of TB occurring in small groups of individuals, which allows for early intervention.
The good news, according to Dunlap, is that TB can be cured. The difficulty lies in that patients with active disease must take medications for at least six months. Infected patients with no symptoms must remain on a drug regimen between two and six months.
“The more we can identify and track carriers of the disease, and provide testing and therapy to those who may have been infected, the better we will be able to eliminate TB,” says Dunlap. “Although it will require a vaccine to achieve worldwide eradication, our focus is on wiping out the disease within our indigenous American population.
The new ITC will focus on controlling TB in populations where the disease is endemic. Dunlap says the work being done at UAB to establish better ways to identify and treat an at-risk population could be applied worldwide.
The ITC is supported by grants from the CDC and the Alabama Department of Public Health. The center will have four components: an International Training component, under the direction of Michael Kimmerling, MD, MPH, the center’s associate director; a Clinical Care and Research component under Dr. William Bailey, MD; a basic sciences component under William Benjamin, Ph.D.; and a public health and training component under Michael Maetz, VMD, MPH.