Tuberculosis is a chronic infection that requires treatment over an extended period. It often occurs in patients who have other significant health conditions such as is HIV. Some patients with complex or chaotic lifestyles find it difficult to adhere to therapy that would be effective if taken regularly. Patient symptoms are a poor guide to treatment response and sequential cultures take a very long time to become positive and are of little value in determining whether the patient is recovering or not. Immunological tests open the possibility of blood-based treatment monitoring but there is uncertainty about the markers to capture and how to interpret these results. Both the WHO and the UNITE4TB consortium have published target product profiles for treatment monitoring in clinical practice and clinical trials respectively.

Some important new techniques have been described recently that could help to monitor tuberculosis therapy. The availability of these new tools poses the question as to how they should be deployed: what samples should be used, when should they be collected and how should the results be interpreted. This research topic is open for papers and reviews that explore these issues from a range of approaches that include microbiological radiological, biochemical and immunological tests that will aid in the management of tuberculosis. Innovative approaches to analysis of the data is an important objective of this research topic.

• Microbiological methods of assessing bacteriological burden

• Microbiological methods of defining cure

• Immunological and other methods of determining treatment response

• Immunological and other methods of defining cure

• How to apply treatment monitoring tools

• Tools to replace mycobacterial culture

• Image based approaches to monitoring treatment response

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Tuberculosis treatment monitoring tools