10-02-2014
In 2012, Pedro Viana Baptista from the Department of Life Sciences at FCT – UNL received together with Miguel Viveiros (Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, IHMT-UNL) the Prize of Scientific Merit Santander Totta /UNL Prize for developing a faster and cheaper TB test. The FCT-UNL researcher has since developed and optimized this methodology for the characterization of multi-drug resistant TB and the results now published in Tuberculosis. This study was based on Portuguese genotypes of the tuberculosis bacillus but the diagnostic methodology can be adapted to any group of genetic resistance. With the new diagnostic technology based on gold nanoparticles it is possible to attain the same diagnostic capability but less expensively and with an easy technical implementation. Early detection of cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in Portugal is an urgent need, where the strains exhibit unique characteristics that make them unresponsive to standard treatments recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).This is an innovative test for faster and cheaper detection of tuberculosis is being developed by the Portuguese team, who intend to bring this new technology to other Portuguese-speaking countries. In February, the CPLP Ministers meet in Maputo and will discuss the creation of a network for the fight against tuberculosis in the community, in which the researchers intend to incorporate this technology. More information in: http://www.jornalmedico.pt/2014/02/06/investigacao-portuguesa-teste-inovador-permite-identificar-multirresistencias-na-tuberculose/
