Increasing Laboratory Capacity for TB Diagnosis With Aureliana Chambal

<p>ASM's Young Ambassador, Aureliana Chambal, discusses the high incidence of tuberculosis in Mozambique and how improved surveillance can help block disease transmission in low resource settings. </p> <h2>Ashley's Biggest Takeaways:</h2> <ul> <li>Mozambique is severely impacted by the TB epidemic, with one of the highest incidences in Africa (368 cases/ 100,000 people in the population).</li> <li>Human-adapted members of the <a href= "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6433267/" target= "_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</em> complex (MTBC) belong to 7 different phylogenetic lineages</a>.</li> <li>These 7 lineages may vary in geographic distribution, and have varying impacts on infection and disease outcome.</li> <li>For decades, 2 reference strains have been used for TB lab research, H37Rv, which Chambal mentions, and Erdman. Both of these belong to TB Lineage 4.</li> <li>According to Chambal, the reference strains that we use for whole genome...