TRIAD STUDY TB-MBLA TRAINING

The Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria as part of a wider consortium led by CAPRISA was awarded a grant from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) for the Triage Test for All Oral DR-TB Regimen (TRiAD) study. TRiAD is a multi-center, multi-country prospective pragmatic cohort study assessing the effectiveness, feasibility, acceptability, and cost-effectiveness of implementing the Xpert MTB/XDR (Xpert XDR; Cepheid) assay for rapid triage-and-treatment with short, all- oral drug resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) treatment. One of the microbiological objectives of this study is to assess the clinical utility of the Tuberculosis Molecular Bacterial Load Assay (TB-MBLA) as a predictor of treatment outcome.

To understand and fully utilize this novel technology, 10 African laboratory scientists were trained on nucleic acid isolation from mycobacterium tuberculosis and to perform reverse transcriptase quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction. The training was facilitated by NIMR-Mbeya Medical Research Centre Tanzania in collaboration with the University of ST Andrews UK under the TRiAD research consortium from 22nd – 26th November, 2021 at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria. The training provided laboratory scientists the skill to test and quantify the MTB bacterial load using the new PCR technique tool (TB-MBLA).