Posts Tagged ‘mycobacterium’

One of the reasons why tuberculosis is such a difficult disease to eradicate is that the bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, can evade our immune systems so well that treatment for the infection often involves taking daily pills for six to nine months. Furthermore, the actual symptoms of infection tend to go away after just two months of therapy, so the incentive to carry on is negligible. This is where MIT medical engineer Jose Gomez-Marquez brilliantly devised a scheme to get people interested in taking their medications. The project is called “XoutTB” and it involves stamp-sized special paper patches that reveal a code when they come into contact with urine containing traces of antituberculosis medication. When patients urinate on these test strips everyday the code they reveal can be sent via text message to phone companies who will then credit the patient-customer with free talk time minutes. A trial involving 30 tuberculosis patients proved to be a success and a larger, second trial of XoutTB will be starting soon in Pakistan.

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