About Tuberculous Meningitis International Research Consortium

Tuberculous meningitis is the most devastating form of tuberculosis, with high associated mortality and morbidity. Our understanding of the epidemiology and pathogenesis is limited, and both diagnostics and treatment have significant shortcomings. A consortium of researchers was convened in Cape Town, South Africa in 2009 to discuss research updates and share experiences. Further meetings were held in Dalat, Vietnam in 2015 and Lucknow, India in 2019. Discussions from this last meeting have been brought together in this series of articles that document the current state of the art regarding tuberculous meningitis. These include the epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and supportive management, as well as proposed research priorities.
 
Collection Advisors
Dr James Seddon
James Seddon is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Stellenbosch University. He also works as an Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St. Mary’s Hospital in London and divides his time between Cape Town and UK. His major area of research is that of children with tuberculosis, specifically drug-resistant forms. James studied medicine at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Imperial College London and has worked as an infantry officer in the British army, as a doctor for Médecins Sans Frontières in Côte d'Ivoire and as an expedition doctor in Patagonia. During 2017 he spent six months at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine in Harvard University on a Fulbright Scholarship evaluating different strategies to combat drug-resistant tuberculosis in children. Currently James is funded through an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship to evaluate correlates of risk in children exposed to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. He is chronically sleep-deprived as he has two young children.
Professor Guy Thwaites
Guy qualified from Cambridge University and the United Medical and Dental schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’ and trained in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in Brighton, the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Vietnam, Imperial College London, and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London. His research interests focus on the management of severe bacterial infections, especially those involving the central nervous system. He has been Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit and Viet Nam Wellcome Trust Africa Asia Programme since 2013.