Aspirin to fight an expensive global killer infection – drug-resistant Tuberculosis
21 March, 2019 
Research led by the Centenary Institute in Sydney has found a brand new target for treating drug-resistant tuberculosis; our scientists have uncovered that the tuberculosis bacterium hijacks platelets from the body’s blood clotting system to weaken our immune systems.
Tuberculosis is far from eradicated around the world and still infects more than 1,400 people per year in Australia. Antibiotic resistant tuberculosis is particularly deadly and expensive to treat, costing up to $250,000 to treat a single case in Australia. Scientists at the Centenary Institute have been working on new ways to treat tuberculosis by increasing the effectiveness of the immune system.
There are over 1.2 million Australians living with latent tuberculosis, a non-infectious form of TB that puts them at risk of developing the active disease. “Our study provides more crucial evidence that widely available aspirin could be used to treat patients with severe tuberculosis infection and save lives,” says Dr Hortle.
Video 1 – Green platelets zooming around the vasculature of a zebrafish embryo. Note some platelets stick to red macrophages infected by blue bacteria.
Video 2 – Zoomed in version of video 1 with visible blood vessels. Green platelets sticking to red blood vessels next to sites of infection by blue bacteria. Pathogenic platelets are the green cells that stick next to the bacteria for a few minutes.
Read the full Press Release.
See the full paper in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Learn more about this Research Laboratories work.
