The story so far: According to recent reports in The Lancet and The Lancet Global Health, nutritional support has helped prevent both tuberculosis (TB) among household contacts and mortality among TB patients in a trial in Jharkhand. In 2017, the World Health Organization had estimated that undernutrition is responsible for twice the number of TB cases than HIV globally. Any attempt to end/eliminate TB in India by 2025 will become possible only if undernutrition among people is addressed. As per conservative estimates, 40% of new TB cases annually in India are due to undernutrition.
What are the key achievements of the trial?
A large field-based trial was undertaken between August 2019 and August 2022 in four districts of Jharkhand by a team led by Dr. Anurag Bhargava and Dr. Madhavi Bhargava from the Yenepoya Medical College, Mangaluru in collaboration with the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) and the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis-Indian Council of Medical Research (NIRT-ICMR).
