PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Tadolini, Marina AU - Centis, Rosella AU - D'Ambrosio, Lia AU - Battista Migliori, Giovanni TI - TB and MDR-TB: what is new in 2012? AID - 10.1183/20734735.025312 DP - 2012 Dec 01 TA - Breathe PG - 100--111 VI - 9 IP - 2 4099 - http://breathe.ersjournals.com/content/9/2/100.short 4100 - http://breathe.ersjournals.com/content/9/2/100.full SO - breathe2012 Dec 01; 9 AB - Educational aims To understand the need for new diagnostics for tuberculosis (TB) and describe the role of GeneXpert To describe to what extent drug resistance affects clinical management of multi/extensively drug resistant-TB, and the importance of having new drugs to manage these difficult-to-treat cases To describe the current evidence on TB/HIV collaborative activities To discuss the importance of providing a public-health response to reach TB elimination through a new post-2015 strategy and to protect new drugs through rational use of treatment regimens Summary In 2007, the 125th anniversary of the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by Robert Koch followed a particularly significant year in the history of tuberculosis (TB) as, in the same year, the World Health Organization and other international organisations published a series of pillar documents and guidelines that set the pathway to improve the control of TB at the global level. Among these, we can mention the Stop TB Strategy, the guidelines on drug-resistant TB management, the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006–2015 and the International Standard of TB Care. Despite the positive results obtained with the implementation of the new recommendations, some crucial gaps remained urgent, such as the need for innovative diagnostic tools for the prompt diagnosis of TB, the rapid identification of drug-resistant strains and the development of new drugs to combat the increasing number of drug-resistant forms of TB. This year, 130 years after Robert Koch's discovery, we can recognise that some of these requests have been met. This article will describe the progresses made in different fields including: laboratory diagnosis and the experience with Xpert® MTB/RIF assay; multi/extensively drug resistant-TB management and development of new promising drugs; implementation of TB/HIV collaborative activities. In addition, it will briefly describe the message of the European Union Standards for TB Care, recently developed by the European Respiratory Society and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. A strong public-health response is now needed to translate the latest recommendations into practice, make good use of the new diagnostic tools and drugs, improve the quality of TB and TB/HIV service worldwide and minimize the development of new cases of MDR-TB, through the correct clinical management of newly diagnosed, drug susceptible TB cases.