THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Dr Vinay Nandicoori, director of CSIR-CCMB and a leading microbiologist, said that tuberculosis has remained as the number one killer among all infectious diseases, despite the clinical use of over 20 antibiotics and BCG, a century-old vaccine.
The disease accounts for nearly 1.5 million deaths yearly. He was delivering a talk on the topic ‘Delineating Molecular Mechanisms that drive the survival of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Mtb)’ at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) in Thiruvananthapuram.
Dr Nandicoori, a J C Bose Fellow, said that the gradual rise in the emergence of increasingly drug-resistant strains and HIV-TB co-infection highlights the urgency to identify newer attractive drugs.
“India, unfortunately, has the highest burden of TB in the world, and it is our problem. Many people do not know that TB is not limited to the lungs. It can be in the eyes, reproductive organs, liver, stomach, and bones. And the worst part of it is diagnosis is even more difficult,” he said.
“It is not an easy pathogen to deal with. And if you end up getting multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria, that would be a serious issue if it comes to treatment. The reason is for anybody with a TB disease, the treatment time is four to six months, depending on the therapy. And if you end up getting MDR TB, it takes about nine months to a year, sometimes even longer,” he said.
He, however, said recent findings in labs on mycobacterial cell division held out hopes of dealing with the increasingly drug-resistant strains of the disease in a more effective manner.
Dr Nandicoori said that it is important to continue with research on TB. Covid alone has killed around 10 million people, but TB kills around 1.5 million people every year.
“For SARS and Covid, one can develop a vaccine, but for TB, it is not an easy one,” he said.