Research Africa
MVA85A vaccine effective in infants borne to HIV-positive parents
April 25th, 2018 The University of Cape Town (UCT) and international researchers are hopeful that infants born to HIV-positive parents could in future not be dependent on the traditional TB vaccine that puts them at risk of contracting the deadly disease – should...
Rats detect TB in children better than basic microscopy test
April 18th, 2018 Rats are able to detect whether a child has tuberculosis (TB) and are much more successful at doing this than a commonly used basic microscopy test. These are the results of research led by Georgies Mgode of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in...Cape Town Metro clinics ignoring guidelines on antibiotics
Clinics are ignoring guidelines on prescribing antibiotics more than half of the time‚ a study has found. And almost one in five people who were given the medication at eight Cape Town clinics did not need it. Others were given incorrect doses or...Stellenbosch has role in developing simple blood test to predict TB development
Stellenbosch University (SU) researchers are part of an international consortium that developed a simple blood test that can predict the development of tuberculosis (TB) up to two years before its onset in people at high risk of developing...
Largest ever study on impact of TB and HIV interventions on sub-Saharan African TB burden
April 4th, 2018 The impact of a combined TB and HIV intervention in tackling tuberculosis when delivered to the entire population of 14 urban, high prevalence communities in South Africa and Zambia, is to be measured in a new £10.5m multi-partner project. The...
Promising family of silver-based anti-cancer drugs discovered
March 28th, 2018 A new family of 'very promising' silver-based anti-cancer drugs has been discovered by researchers in South Africa. The most promising silver thiocyanate phosphine complex among these, called UJ3 for short, has been successfully tested in rats...
SA clinical trial finds TB vaccine well tolerated
March 28th, 2018 Researchers at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) and Aeras have released the first results from a clinical trial reporting safety and...
Young rural SA women more vulnerable to STIs than young men
March 14th, 2018 Young women in rural SA were more than twice as likely as young men to be infected with chlamydia and nearly twice as likely with genital herpes, found a proof of concept study led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the...
Innovative 'invisible ink' successfully detects TB
March 7th, 2018 University of Witwatersrand scientists and international researchers have pioneered an innovative process to detect TB bacteria by adding a molecule to the bacteria’s own protective layer that illuminates under fluorescent light. In the study...
First evidence of what most attracts the mosquitos that carry dengue and chikungunya
March 7th, 2018 The first evidence from a University of Nairobi study of how chemical compounds found in body odour can be used to develop effective mosquito bait traps to control dengue and chikungunya. Kenya has seen a rapid increase in chikungunya and...
Measles vaccine improves child survival beyond protecting against measles
February 28th, 2018 In the largest study to date on children in a low/middle income country, researchers from the Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ghana, OPEN, Institute of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, research and development division,...
Meta-analysis of STI prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa
February 28th, 2018 Prevalence of curable sexually transmitted infections (STIs)– chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and trichomoniasis – among women aged 15 to 24 exceeds that of older women and similar-aged men in sub-Saharan Africa, according to research. In one...Encouraging results from SA TB vaccine trial
Scientists from the University of Cape Town-based South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation have announced that they will present the findings of an innovative clinical trial that provides encouraging...
Despite HIV risk, withdrawing Depo-Provera could increase maternal mortality
January 17th, 2018 Even if Depo-Provera and other contraceptive injections raise the risk of HIV infection, withdrawing them from use in African countries would greatly increase maternal mortality, a modelling study has shown. The loss of life due to pregnancy...Low-cost jaundice detector passes first trial in Africa
BiliSpec a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood, has successfully passed its first clinical trial in Malawi. The first clinical study of...