Over the last five years since 2015, we have collected more than 100,000 samples from patients with Tuberculosis, from all over the world.
We have tested which antibiotics work on every single sample we collected, and determined the genome of the *M. Tuberculosis* bacteria in each sample.
So far with the Bash the Bug Volunteers help with classifications:
- We have conducted the largest and most comprehensive study to date investigating whether Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) can be used to predict whether the four most common drugs used to treat tuberculosis can cure a specific infection i.e. the infection is susceptible to the drugs.
- We performed WGS across 9 genes associated with drug susceptibility and resistance on 10,290 tuberculosis samples from people in 16 different countries across six continents.
- We used the WGS to predict whether each of the four drugs could be used to cure the infection and then compared our results with the known drug-susceptibility profiles.
- We found WGS could be used to predict drug-susceptibility and demonstrated how it might direct which drug to use in treatment. This has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
- By using WGS our understanding of the genetic code of tuberculosis is now so detailed that we can predict which commonly used drugs are best used to successfully treat a patient’s infection and which are not.
Without the help of our Bash the Bug Volunteers all of the above would not have happened!
Well done and Thank You.