Project: Tuberculosis Reduction through Expanded Antiretroviral Treatment and Screening for active TB
| Acronym | TREATS (Reference Number: RIA2016S-1632) |
| Duration | 01/12/2017 - 30/11/2021 |
| Project Topic | The TREATS (Tuberculosis Reduction through Expanded Anti-retroviral Treatment and Screening for active TB) project consists of 4 linked studies that will provide definitive cluster-randomised evidence of the effect of a household-level combined HIV and TB prevention intervention on the burden of TB at population level. These studies are nested within the ongoing HPTN071(PopART) trial, the largest ever trial of a combination HIV/TB prevention intervention being conducted in Zambia and South Africa. The project will produce two major outputs of global importance to public health policy. The first will provide definitive evidence of the effectiveness of scaled up combination TB/HIV prevention interventions on TB. The second output will improve understanding of the best ways to measure the impact of public health interventions on TB burden. This is a unique opportunity to assess the impact of combination HIV prevention, including universal HIV testing and treatment, combined with population screening for active TB on the burden of TB. The HPTN071(PopART) trial, a cluster randomised trial in 21 communities in Zambia and South Africa with a population size of approximately 1million individuals, is unlikely ever to be repeated. The recently adopted WHO guidelines of a “universal treatment” strategy for HIV, will prompt policy-makers to seek strategies of case-finding for HIV offering an opportunity to conduct TB screening on a large scale. The results from the TREATS project will therefore provide unique and timely information of the additional costs and benefits of combined TB and HIV prevention strategies at population level. TREATS will also assess novel methods to measure the effect of interventions on burden of TB in the trial communities. The latest interferon gamma release assay QuantiFERON® Gold Plus will be assessed for measuring impact of TB interventions on incidence of infection. A combination of Xpert® MTB/RIF and computer aided digital X-ray (CAD4TB) will be assessed for measuring prevalence of active TB. These new methods will provide important information about the best way of measuring TB incidence and prevalence rates and allow triangulation of the different methods to inform global estimates of TB burden in the post MDG era. The TREATS consortium will stimulate synergy between leading African research groups (Zambart, HST); new European technology (Delft Diagnostic Imaging, Qiagen); international TB bodies (The Union) and European research centres (LSHTM, Imperial College, Sheffield University and KNCV), as well as with the US funders of the HPTN071/PopART trial. |
| Network | EDCTP2 |
| Call | Strategic actions supporting large-scale clinical trials 2016 |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Coordinator | United Kingdom |
| 3 | Delft Imaging Systems B.V. | Partner | Netherlands |
| 4 | Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 5 | Koninklijke Nederlandse Centrale Vereniging tot Bestrijding ter Tuberculose | Partner | Netherlands |
| 6 | London School of Economics and Political Science | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 7 | QIAGEN GmbH | Partner | Germany |
| 8 | The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease | Partner | France |
| 9 | Trust for Health Systems Planning and Development | Partner | South Africa |
| 10 | University of Sheffield | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 11 | ZAMBART Project Limited | Partner | Zambia |