Newly Funded Grant- Triage Test for All Oral DR-TB Regimen (TRiAD)

IRCE-IHVN is part of a wider consortium led by CAPRISA which was recently awarded a grant worth approx. 4.5M euros from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) for the Triage Test for All Oral DR-TB Regimen (TRiAD) study and Prof Alash’le Abimiku is the Nigeria country PI.

The TriAD study 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. The proposed study aims to screen approximately 4800 GeneXpert MTB/RIF or Ultra MTB-positive (irrespective of rifampicin resistance status) patients from 9 study sites in South Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia with a target to enroll 880 rifampicin resistant (RR, MDR, pre-XDR or XDR) and 400 isoniazid mono-resistant (HR) patients over a period of 12-18 months. The total duration of the study is for 48 months.

Results from the Xpert XDR assay will be used to guide selection of appropriate, evidence-based, all-oral DR-TB treatment regimens of shortest possible duration. The tuberculosis molecular bacterial load assay (TB-MBLA) will be used as an addition to provide bacillary load monitoring over the course of treatment to assess real-time treatment response (i.e. for research purpose and not for treatment decision). This research will provide information about the feasibility, acceptability and cost-effectiveness which will inform policies and guidelines for programmatic implementation of the triage-and-treat model.

TRiAD website: www.triadtrial.org