Stool4TB consortium concludes final annual meeting
After meeting in the two other study countries, it was Eswatini’s turn to host the annual Stool4TB consortium in Mbabane at the end of May 2025. (The team visited Uganda in 2023 and Mozambique in 2024.)
The meeting took place in the crucial final stage of the project, with only seven months remaining. Over three days, the 28 participants deliberated on the remaining work to conclude this 5-year project evaluating a new diagnostic test for TB using stool samples. Consortium members also celebrated the seven scientific articles published so far in peer-reviewed journals, with the main study results still to come!
For a full day, participants discussed the preliminary results from the main study to decide how best to further analyse and present these to both the research community and other research stakeholders. They plan to submit two late-breaker abstracts to the World Conference on Lung Health and host dissemination meetings with stakeholders in all three countries where the study took place.
Stool4TB’s PhD candidates, George Kasule and Edson Mambuque, presented updates on their research. Both are involved in ancillary studies of the project, now counting more than a dozen.
On the last day, members visited the local study site – the Tuberculosis Centre of Excellence run by the Baylor Foundation Eswatini. Here, the local principal investigator, Alex Kay, introduced the Stool4TB consortium members to the dedicated clinic and project staff. In total, 260 adults and 314 children were recruited, followed, and supported here during their participation in the study.
The consortium members concluded the meeting with discussions on how best to continue the Stool4TB work after the project officially ends. As one example, they hope to launch a call asking for proposals on how best to make use of the extensive biobank – containing stool, blood, urine, and sputum samples from each participant at different time points – established for the project.
The final half-day of the meeting was dedicated to the annual capacity-building component. This year, Abigail Seeger (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston) together with Dr Zanele Nhlabatsi from the TB Centre of Excellence, conducted training in the statistical programming language R. After a series of weekly online preparatory sessions, the 20 or so researchers learned how to use R for data analysis using Stool4TB project data. Hopefully, this will enable junior researchers from the project to continue analysing some of the research questions emanating from the project.
Photos 1 & 2: The Stool4TB consortium at their final annual meeting in Mbabane, Eswatini.
Photos 3 & 4: Eswatini’s deputy director of public health, Rejoice Nkambule, opened the meeting.
Photos 5 & 6: Abigail Seeger (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston) and Zanele Nhlabatsi (TB Centre of Excellence) conducted training in the statistical programming language R as part of Stool4TB’s annual capacity-building component.
Photos 7 & 8: Consortium members visited the Eswatini study site, the Tuberculosis Centre of Excellence run by the Baylor Foundation Eswatini.