During the meeting, the consortium seized the opportunity to discuss insights and preliminary data from the TB-CAPT XDR trial, a laboratory-based feasibility study that is evaluating the accuracy of the Xpert MTB/XDR cartridge on GeneXpert on 753 samples from patients with rifampicin-resistant TB in South Africa, and looked at the progress made in the two other trials, which were both launched during the summer: The TB-CAPT CORE trial, which aims at assessing the impact of making the Molbio MTB assays on the Truenat platform available at the primary healthcare level, and the TB-CAPT HIV trial that will assess the impact of an expanded testing strategy for diagnosing TB amongst people living with HIV.
The virtual project meeting was a good opportunity for the clinical sites in Tanzania and Mozambique, where the CORE and HIV trials are implemented, to report on their efforts to pick up enrolment quickly and efficiently and celebrate the progress made so far. They also shared lessons learnt and discussed ways to tackle particular challenges, which will greatly help move both trials forward in the coming months.
Capacity development was also spotlighted at the meeting, with an interactive assessment of the ongoing mentorship programme and a joint brainstorming for ways to improve the support system, especially in the light of a continued lack of face-to-face meetings.
For the upcoming months, the TB-CAPT consortium is eager to share more findings of the XDR trial with the public and see the CORE and HIV trials progress, with the aim of starting the analysis of results for these two studies by the end of next year. For more information about TB-CAPT, visit their website.