Grant: Project Grant

Tuberculosis, an infectious disease that usually affects our lungs, is a huge health problem worldwide, as more than 10 million people develop tuberculosis every year. Even though we can treat tuberculosis, some people who survive it face long-term problems with their breathing. In 2023, our team conducted a project where we looked at 61 studies on this topic. We discovered that 59% of people who survived tuberculosis had problems with their lungs, and 25% reported breathing problems. This is significant as more than 155 million people currently alive have survived tuberculosis and are at risk of these outcomes. A key next step is to understand who is at the highest risk of having breathing problems so we can improve healthcare for them. For this project, our goal is to understand who is most at risk for long-term breathing problems after tuberculosis. To answer this, we will update our prior project and ask the researchers of the studies we review to share their anonymized, complete study data so we can enrich our understanding. Using these data, we will identify different characteristics that put tuberculosis survivors at high risk of lung and breathing problems after treatment. We will look at things like age and medical history to see how they might be connected. Next, we will create a computer program to predict who might have lung and breathing problems after finishing tuberculosis treatment so we can use our healthcare resources smartly. This program will use information like age, sex, and smoking history to determine risk. The findings from our work will help identify people at high risk for lung and breathing problems, making it easier to help them early on. We might also determine that certain tests to diagnose breathing problems are better than others, which would be especially helpful in ensuring people who survive tuberculosis get the right care after treatment.