The (re)discovery of the spectrum of TB – what is next?

Speaker: Rein Houben is a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at LSHTM. Trained as an epidemiologist, he has spent most of his career working in TB, including running TB field studies in Northern Malawi. For the past years he has combined epidemiological and mathematical modelling techniques to explore and quantify TB pathways across the spectrum of infection and disease. He is the co-lead of the LSHTM TB modelling group, and sits on the steering committee of the LSHTM TB Centre and management team of the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases. He is a member of the WHO TB Impact and Measurement Task Force, and was the co-lead organiser for the 1st international symposium on New Concepts in Early TB (Cape Town, Feb 2023).

Topic: Over the past decade the TB community has recognised that individuals can experience a wide range of disease pathways between Mtb infection and disease, introducing new states such as subclinical disease and self-cleared to the spectrum. However, recognising and quantifying the complexity of TB is only the first step towards improving TB care and prevention, with many opportunities and challenges ahead. In the seminar Rein will first describe the progress made, and some of the immediate consequences for current TB programmes. The second part of the seminar will look ahead to what is next, highlighting some of the opportunities and challenges for a number of fields, which he hopes will stimulate discussion and some generation of new ideas of how to translate new insights into improved care and prevention for individuals and communities affected by TB.