North London TB Journal Club

Please join us for our first meeting of the 2016/17 academic year, which will be hosted by the MRC Clinical Trials Unit.

Speaker – Riya Moodley

Chair – Patrick Phillips

Time – 12.30 til 13.30 on Tuesday 27 September

Venue – Aviation House

At the meeting, we will be discussing the 2016 update to the WHO treatment guidelines for drug-resistant tuberculosis. You can access the relevant documents here…

– the guidelines

– the factsheet

– frequently asked questions

Were the right drugs promoted and demoted? Was the WHO correct to conditionally recommend use of shorter Bangladesh-style regimens in certain circumstances? How should children be treated? What is the role for surgery in managing drug-resistant TB?

If you plan to attend, please email patrick.phillips@ucl.ac.uk before the meeting. Please plan to arrive 5-10 minutes early to allow time to clear security.

North London TB Journal Club is on a summer break during July and August. However, we will be back in September 2016 under new management – more details soon. In the meantime, you may like to catch up with videos of previous TB events held in North London – the M.tb Transmission Meeting, the World TB Day 2016 event, or the recent RSTMH meeting on the End TB Strategy.

The title will be: “Genetic determinants of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and their diagnostic value. Farhat, M. R. AJRCCM 1–74 (2016).”

Free tickets available via eventbrite

Dr Michael Murphy presented the February meeting, with Dr Marc Lipman chairing, from 4pm on Monday 15th February in room TR9, The Royal Free Hospital (UCL Medical School), Hampstead, London.

The title of the article was “Pharmacodynamic modelling of bacillary elimination rates and detection of bacterial lipid bodies in sputum to predict and understand outcomes in treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis” from Clinical Infectious Diseases.

UCL-TB and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will be holding their annual tuberculosis symposium at the John Snow lecture theatre at the LSHTM on Wednesday 23rd March, 2016.
Find out more and get your free ticket here

Here are the first three North London TB Journal Club meetings for 2016

• Wednesday 27th Jan 1600 presented by Patrick Djomo at UCL
  (this follows the UCL-TB Winter Seminar given by Helen Jenkins)
• Monday 15th Feb 1600 presented by Marc Lipman at the Royal Free Hospital
• Tuesday 26th April 1600 Francesc Coll at UCL

Conor Tweed, a member of the STAND project team presented at the UCL MRC Clinical Trials Unit on the 24th of November. The the paper he shared with the team was: “Use of standardised patients to assess quality of tuberculosis care: a pilot, cross-sectional study.” Jishnu Das, PhD, Ada Kwan, MHS, Benjamin Daniels, MS, Srinath Satyanarayana, MD, Ramnath Subbaraman, MD, Sofi Bergkvist, MS, Ranendra K Das, PhD, Veena Das, PhD, Prof Madhukar Pai, MD published in the November 2015 edition of The Lancet.

Background
Existing studies of the quality of tuberculosis care have relied on recall-based patient surveys, questionnaire surveys of knowledge, and prescription or medical record analysis, and the results mostly show the health-care provider’s knowledge rather than actual practice. No study has used standardised patients to assess clinical practice. Therefore we aimed to assess quality of care for tuberculosis using such patients.

Read the full Lancet article here

Dr Conor Tweed will present the November meeting of the North London TB Journal Club at the UCL Clinical Trials Unit from 1-2pm on Tuesday the 24th November. To reserve your free ticket please follow the link to the November meeting Eventbrite page. Please note that access to the building is restricted so please arrive at least 5 minutes early and reserve a free ticket to ensure you are able to attend.

Date:   Tuesday 13th October, 4.00-5.00pm

Location: Lucas Room LG81, LSHTM, Keppel St, London WC1E 7HT.

Dr Helen Fletcher, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s TB Centre, will be presenting on:

Effects of MVA85A vaccine on tuberculosis challenge in animals: systematic.

“As someone who spent 11 years developing this vaccine you can imagine I have a thing or two to say about this paper….” says Helen.