Tuberculosis kills on a vast scale, but as foreign aid shrinks, countries with a high burden of TB stand to gain a lot by investing more to curb the disease and its heavy social cost @economist.com impact.economist.com/health-socie...

SCIENCE AND STRATEGY STAR | Professor Willem Hanekom tells Spotlight about taking a ventilated young patient to the Sea Point promenade, living with HIV, the need for an African research agenda, and the recurring joy that has defined his career. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2026/05/07/t...

A Review in Communications Medicine explores Long COVID — which affects more than 400 million people globally — including current knowledge, gaps and future directions for research, diagnosis and treatment. go.nature.com/4unyxtI #medsky 🧪

Bangladesh is in the grip of an explosive measles epidemic, stemming from a catastrophic breakdown in vaccine procurement following the country’s 2024 revolution. The result was nationwide vaccine shortages and plummeting immunization rates. https://scim.ag/4tM2lAr

So we blocked IFNγ in Mtb infected macaques and….the animals were fine. Turns out mice overestimate the importance of IFNγ in TB because IFNγ drives iNOS in mice but not macaques or humans. This means we don’t actually know how T cells suppress Mtb. rdcu.be/ff9GB #tuberculosis #immunology

Beautifully done and important trial. An effective mTb test that utilizes tongue swab specimens will be absolutely transformative for Tb diagnosis especially is resource limited settings. Definitely practice modifying. www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

In this mathematical modelling study, Katherine Horton & co assess #TB community screening approaches & their estimated effects on TB incidence & mortality, concluding that methods that capture both infectious & non-infectious TB are needed to achieve sustained case reductions🧪 plos.io/4tuD2SM

In our latest paper in @plosmedicine.org, we explore trade-offs in diagnostic algorithm, coverage, and duration of community screening for #TB, highlighting the importance of symptom-agnostic approaches and the need for strategies to sustain impact when screening ends. plos.io/4tuD2SM

A fascinating long read for World TB Day #tbsky @stoptb.bsky.social @madhupai.bsky.social @treatmentactiongroup.org @tomscriba.bsky.social#tbsky

DATA MUST DRIVE ACTION | South Africa's new TB dashboard is a win for transparency. The data must now help boost TB testing and find the people still missing from care, say leading TB activists. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2026/03/16/a...

NEW HOPE | For more than a century, the world has relied on a single TB vaccine. That could finally change with top South African researchers playing a key role. Associate Professor Angelique Kany Kany Luabeya explains why this moment matters. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2026/03/17/t...

"When intending to upload code, some researchers have also accidentally published partial or entire Biobank datasets to GitHub, a popular online code-sharing platform." www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

41 Celsius in Cape Town today

We have a vacancy for Data Scientist position within our dynamic clinical immunology group. To apply visit the UCT online job portal at: www.uct.ac.za

Pretty depressing stuff www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Latest research: Estimating the population impact of new tuberculosis vaccines depending on efficacy against infectious asymptomatic tuberculosis: A modelling study appearing in the @plosmedicine.org journal. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41678562/

#ClimateChange isn’t just melting ice caps. It’s changing pollen seasons, worsening air pollution and increasing breathing problems in South Africa. Learn how to report it accurately — and compellingly. Sign up for our webinar. forms.gle/NTHCHkMnZiG7...

In this modeling study, Allison Portnoy and colleagues investigate the potential impact of reduced international donor funding on the household economic burden of tuberculosis in low- and middle-income countries 🧪 #MedSky #TB plos.io/4ryyBFX

Our recent modelling study found that the estimated impact of new TB vaccines depends on the efficacy to prevent infectious asymptomatic TB. Read more in our paper out now in @plosmedicine.org! journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

A new paper levels fresh allegations of questionable scientific practices by the Bandim Health Project, an embattled group led by researchers in Denmark that has long studied vaccines in West Africa and has recently become influential in U.S. health policy. https://scim.ag/3ZY7NCR

Almost all of the scientists were previously at US institutions go.nature.com/4qMlrUR

The real story about statin safety from >122,000 RCT participants with individual level data. They can cause new-onset diabetes and muscle pain/weakness, but other than that they are remarkably safe for 62 outcomes. Rare liver function test abnormalities thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Very interesting paper: M. tuberculosis proteins under diversifying selection and the T cell responses that target them. Could these be good TB vaccine antigens? JCI Insight: Rare variable M. tuberculosis antigens induce predominant Th17 responses in human infection insight.jci.org/articles/vie...

Book review 📚 Are health influencers making us sick? go.nature.com/4tsEOoq

US science after a year of Trump A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce. go.nature.com/4jSm0ui

Yes, Davos, the playground for rich and famous today was once home for desperate tuberculosis patients seeking a cure in sanatoria

One Year Post-USAID, Global Health Funding Stuck in Limbo www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/one-...

This is a very appealing meeting in Paris later this year... "The complexity of mycobacterial infections: from research to real-world impact" #EMBOComplexInfections #TBSky for the tuberculosis research, but also #NTM #Leprosy #IDSky #ImmunoSky meetings.embo.org/event/26-myc...

Important paper by Björn Corleis. For decades a central tenet of #tuberculosis immunology has that IFNγ-driven iNOS expression in macrophages is the primary mechanism of bacterial control. Turns out this is really only in mice and maybe cattle. It’s not true in most species including humans an NHP.

The Barber lab is looking to hire post-docs to work on #tuberculosis #immunology using murine and NHP models. BSL3 experience not required. Check out our lab in the NIH intramural program in Bethesda MD!

A shortened, four-month course of tuberculosis drug therapy has a higher risk of relapse linked to active lung cavities compared to a standard 6-month protocol, shows a new #ScienceTranslationalMedicine clinical trial of patients in South Africa and China. https://scim.ag/4jv4oo5

“The NIH has lost its scientific integrity. So we left” www.statnews.com/2026/01/10/n...

This is an excellent summary of the scientific developments that led to and enabled vaccine development. In my view a must read for anyone who crosses paths with vaccination - ie, everyone. worksinprogress.co/issue/the-go...

Summary of this report in case access is a problem www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hoping the pivotal finding of increased inflammation with #LongCovid will be responsive to tirzepatide (Zepbound) in our ongoing 1,000+ participant randomized, placebo-controlled trial (full enrollment completed in <1 month!) www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natimmunol.nature.com

🚀 The TB Individual Patient Data (IPD) Platform is now on Bluesky! Hosted at UCL and overseen by the UCL Centre for Global Tuberculosis Research, we bring together individual patient data to strengthen TB research, policy, and public health. 🔗 www.ucl.ac.uk/population-h...

If interested in meta-analysis of TB patient data from trials, do get in touch with colleagues at UCL below! 👇 #IDSky #MedSky #TBSky

How fortunate that two of the things I love the most in life are associated with prolonged survival. Plus, a very important "recent" paper. Happy New Year! #IDsky #Medsky open.substack.com/pub/paulsaxm...

Want a 2.5 minute primer on the ingenuity of randomised controlled trials? Of course you do.

Happy New Year from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Cape Town. #Mango_Groove

The @ragoninstitute.bsky.social is launching a new faculty search for a computational immunologist! Applications are open now and reviewed on a rolling basis. Please share broadly with your networks! #immunosky www.nature.com/naturecareer...

I think we all need some good news for global health and infectious diseases!

Remarkably, this phosphate-limitation response does not kill the bacterium, suggesting it is reversible and functionally equivalent. Electron microscopy by Max Gutierrez @maxgg.bsky.social and colleagues shows a structured and ~10% thicker cell envelope associated with this remodeling.

These findings highlight that decades of research have focused on an artificial lipid profile, shaped by the high phosphate content of Middlebrook media and likely modestly relevant for infection. The data also reveals a high degree of plasticity in the composition of Mtb cell envelope.

We’re excited to share our latest study that reshapes our understanding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) lipid composition, with major implications for drug discovery, immunity, and vaccine development. www.nature.com/articles/s41... A thread.

Two pieces of fun news: 1. We've launched a new website for our lab: www.brysonlab.org 2. With some new funding, we are recruiting for new postdocs and graduate students. The projects build upon our previous studies of antigen presentation and phagosome biology and go into new exciting dimensions!

The pipeline of scientists is cracked at every level now: recent grads can't get jobs/research experience because we're all conservative about hiring in this climate, fewer grad school spots, killing many fellowship pipelines, and now the early career investigators are disproportionately impacted.

Such a lovely way of explaining why global solidarity matters!

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".