Kampala — UGANDA is among five countries selected to participate in a $27m (sh46b) tuberculosis research project.

The five-year research, funded by the American National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will bring together an international consortium of physician and research scientists from South Africa, Brazil, Philippines, Uganda and the U.S.

According to a statement from Case Western Reserve University, the $27m award followed an earlier $28m for a seven-year TB research which started in 1999.

Uganda, which is ranked 15th among the 22 tuberculosis-endemic countries, also partook of the first phase.

Henry Boom, the principal investigator and professor of Medicine at the School of Medicine and University Hospitals, Case Medical Centre, said the Uganda-Case Research Collaboration, involving medics and researchers from Makerere University, Mulago Hospital and the Joint Clinical Research Centre (JCRC) will "feature prominently" in the project.

The research, which will look at the immune response to TB and why some people easily develop active TB, will be led by the TB Research Unit of Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine in Ohio, USA.

It will investigate why the TB vaccine that is used worldwide to protect newborn and young children is no longer protecting adolescents and adults from TB.

Since 1962, no new TB drug has been developed. Under the Global Plan to Stop TB, launched in 2000, there has been renewed vigour (socially and politically) to rid the world of TB, which kills nearly two million people and infects nine million others every year.

It is projected that the first new TB drug in 40 years will be introduced in 2010. The drug is hoped to entail a much faster TB regiment (lasting one to two months, compared with the current six to eight months).

The current TB dosage (first-line treatment) entails a combination of four tablets - Rifampicin, Isoniazid, Pyrazinamide and Ethambutol.

In Uganda, the studies will address the growing problem of HIV-TB co-infection, said Dr. Peter Mugyenyi, the director of JCRC.

He said the Uganda National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programme calculates that HIV has led to a four-fold increase in TB cases in the country.

The use of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) in HIV-positive patients is responsible for a new phenomenon called ART-induced Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome, which leads to high death rates among people who have just started taking ARVs.

"TB increases the speed of HIV, and HIV increases the speed of TB," Mugyenyi said, adding that: "TB which is latent can easily flare up once an HIV-infected person starts taking ARVs."