![adrie steyn](/medicine/news/images/News/adrie_steyn.jpg)
While public health measures have controlled tuberculosis (TB) in the United States, there are more than 100,000 active cases of TB in KwaZulu-Natal, both multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), and 70 percent of the TB patients also are infected with HIV.
Steyn brings U.S. researchers like UAB graduate student Jennifer Rowland or UAB medical student Ryan Wells to K-RITH to see the disease first-hand. Steyn also sends African researchers to UAB for training, helping build future research strength for the continent.
“I can send students (in KwaZulu-Natal) to a 1,000-bed hospital two miles away that has only MDR and XDR patients,” he said. “Some are 5-months- to 2-years-old. By the time they get out, they will be orphans.”
The K-RITH facility is state-of-the-art and is linked to a modern hospital that offers one of the last hopes for a TB patient – removal of part of a lung. Research with those excised tissues allows K-RITH researchers to look at how the tuberculosis bacteria change the protein profiles of human immune cells as the bacteria evade destruction.
“There’s no way I could dream of getting lung samples here in Birmingham,” Steyn said. “There, we do three to four lung resections in a week.”
To keep his Birmingham lab on track, Steyn commutes to UAB from Durban six times a year, spending 10 days to two weeks on each visit.
“The two labs complement each other,” Steyn said.
K-RITH is a joint collaboration between the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Contributed by Jeff Hansen for the UAB School of Medicine