Peter MacPherson

One of the pleasures of my academic job is my role as an Academic Editor for PLOS Medicine.

Next up in our 'meet the editors' is Academic Editor Peter MacPherson (@petermacp.bsky.social), Professor of Global Public Health and Head of Public Health at the University of Glasgow. Peter also specializes in infectious disease epidemiology, tuberculosis, HIV, and evidence synthesis 🧪 #MedSky

I have been messing around with biscale plots here… but not sure whether they work on not. Could work with a hex plot too I guess

We are recruiting! We are looking for statistical methodologists at Research Fellow / Senior Research Fellow level for our new Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) in Clinical Trial Innovation. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please share!

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

I biked to work today in the snow in Glasgow. It was delightful!

Our Editor’s Choice commentary in @cidjournal.bsky.social finds that reported TB symptoms are an inadequate classifier of disease state, as they are heavily influenced by context and substantial interviewer variability, and may have alternative causes.

Read more here👇🏻

doi.org/10.1093/cid/...

🚨Fully-funded PhD opportunity!🚨

Interested in researching how to improve risk prediction for people with #tuberculosis #TB and #multimorbidity?

Joint project between @uofgshw.bsky.social 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and @ki.se 🇸🇪, funded by UK MRC.

Details here⬇️

www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate...

The impact of latent tuberculosis screening programmes for migrant populations in high income, low burden countries Background Migrants from high to low tuberculosis (TB) incidence countries may benefit from screening for latent TB infection (LTBI), but the optimal approaches and effectiveness are not well describe...

Latent #tuberculosis (TB) infection screening programmes for migrants from high to low TB incidence countries can be effective and cost-saving in a variety of settings.

New study by @petermacp.bsky.social @alice-e-taylor.bsky.social @publichealthscot.bsky.social

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

UK to put 250,000 lives at risk from HIV, TB and malaria with aid cuts Exclusive: The UK is expected to pledge £850m to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria – a cut of 15 per cent – despite previous assurances that funding would be protected

Ahead of The Union World Conference on Lung Health, Katherine Horton provides @the-independent.com with insights into the devastating impact of the funding cuts on global health, particularly tuberculosis.

Be sure to read about the threat of UK aid cuts: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

YouTube video by LIGHT Consortium Chuwuebuka Ugwu - DESTINE Study, Nigeria

Every year, ~500,000 people develop TB in Nigeria — but 30% go undiagnosed.

Dr. Chukwuebuka Ugwu’s DESTINE study shows how gender-tailored, locally co-created TB interventions can close this gap.

🎥 Watch here: youtu.be/JOFzgHOwFFk?...

@zanklic.bsky.social

Was very fortunate to see Counting Crows play last night… only 27 years since I last saw them play in Scotland.

Integration of tuberculosis services within primary health care: converting challenges into opportunities

With declining donor aid, Ministries of Health in high-tuberculosis burden nations need to be more ambitious, but will have to do more with less

Embedding tuberculosis within the PHC and UHC agenda is an obvious way to do it

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A global analysis of patterns of tuberculosis exposure and transmission Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health concern and the leading infectious cause of mortality globally. The disease exhibits strong prevalence patterns by age and sex, but the implications of these...

Understanding patterns of #TB exposure and transmission is needed for targeted prevention strategies. In our latest pre-print, @petedodd24.bsky.social and I estimated the proportion of TB exposure to and transmission from sex and age groups for 177 countries.

bit.ly/4nbV492

The recognition of asymptomatic #TB is both fascinating and worrying. The recognition of symptoms is the gate-keeper to so much of our public health response. Seems like another important argument for broader community access to diagnostic services!

New preprint (NOT PEER-REVIEWED)

Community screening for #TB can reduce incidence. But we don’t know how best to target.

Targeting based on neighbourhood ARTI from convenience samples can substantially improve health and cost-effectiveness vs untargeted screening.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

⚡️New publication⚡️

We investigated the risk and determinants of mortality in people notified with Invasive Group A Streptococcal disease in Scotland between Jan 2017 and Dec 2024.

doi.org/10.1016/j.ij...

@uofgshw.bsky.social

⚡️New publication⚡️

WHO clinical staging is not sufficiently accurate to identify advanced #HIV.

CD4 testing remains essential to reduce morbidity and mortality.

doi.org/10.1111/hiv....

@uofgshw.bsky.social
@joejarvis.bsky.social

Our systematic review of rural/urban differences in #TB prevalence shows evidence of rapidly urbanising epidemics in many settings, with differences across countries and regions.

Link to preprint below ⬇️

A great team project with @kchorton.bsky.social (on Bluesky) and colleagues not on Bluesky from @uofgshw.bsky.social, @tb-lshtm.bsky.social and @hsph.harvard.edu

We found that #TB epidemics are rapidly urbanising, with profound implications for care and prevention programmes.

There are big differences between countries and global regions in the timing of urbanisation of TB epidemics, likely driven by demographic changes.

A plot, facetted by country, showing the percentage of TB that is urban and rural between 2000-2023

A forest plot, showing estimates of the urban to rural TB prevalence in 46 studies

Are there more people with #TB in cities or rural areas?

In a 🚨new🚨 preprint (NOT PEER REVIEWED) we modelled urban-rural TB trends from 2000-2023 in 26 countries with 4.6 billion people.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Men are more than twice as likely as women to have prevalent #TB.

We did updated meta-analysis including over 4million people in 99 surveys.

Despite increasing focus on gender equitable TB responses, this gap has widened since we last assessed these data over a decade ago.

6/ @petermacp.bsky.social and I seem to be the only coauthors on Bluesky, but this work comes from a great team across @hsph.harvard.edu @uofglasgow.bsky.social @tb-lshtm.bsky.social @lshtm-tbmod.bsky.social

5/ These findings show that, despite calls for gender responsive TB prevention and care, disparities have increased over the past three decades. Effective strategies to reduce men’s risk of TB and to engage men in TB prevention and care remain essential to end TB.

NOT PEER REVIEWED

4/ The stability of pooled estimates doesn't mean sex ratios have remained consistent. We found evidence that male-to-female ratios likely increased 1.6% (95% CrI -1.0-6.2%) annually over the period 1994–2021, with the greatest increase in the Western Pacific region.

NOT PEER REVIEWED

3/ We fitted multi-level Bayesian regression models to estimate a pooled male-to-female prevalence ratio of 2.21 (95% CrI 1.94-2.50) for bacteriologically-confirmed TB.

That's the same point estimate as our previous review, but the two studies used different analytical methods.

NOT PEER REVIEWED

2/ We updated our systematic review and identified 99 TB prevalence surveys reporting sex-disaggregated results (with >4 million participants) conducted between 1993 and 2024 in 33 low- or middle-income countries.

NOT PEER REVIEWED

1/ It’s been 10 years (😮) since we reported that #TB prevalence was twice as high in men as in women.

📢 Our new preprint explores how sex differences have shifted with more recent national prevalence surveys and growing attention to #gender responsive TB prevention and care.

bit.ly/4gqP1LH

Economic burden and cost-effectiveness of treatments for open tibia fractures in Malawi: Economic analysis of a multicentre prospective cohort study Background Open tibia fractures result in substantial lifelong disability for patients, and are expensive to treat. As the injury typically affects young working men, the societal costs from open tibi...

🆕paper co-authored by @petermacp.bsky.social

Key finding - Open tibia fractures result in significant costs to patients, the healthcare system and society in Malawi.

Re-balancing of health budgets is needed to prioritise trauma care.

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

The potential impact of declining development assistance for health on population health in Malawi: A modelling study Author summary Why was this study done? Development assistance for health (DAH) is an important source of funding for public healthcare services in Malawi. Its contribution is expected to decline...

As well as the modelling study by Molaro and colleagues that looks specifically at the effects of #health #aid reductions in #Malawi
journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
@plos.org