A University of Otago health researcher, Prof Philip Hill, is part of a scientific consortium that has used genome scanning to identify a gene associated with increased susceptibility to tuberculosis (Tb) in African populations.
One-third of the world's population are believed to be infected with M.
Tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes Tb.
Each year at least 9 million people need treatment for Tb, and more than 2 million people die from the disease.
The identification of the genetic variant linked with greater Tb susceptibility was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.
Prof Hill, who is director of the Otago University Centre for International Health, previously oversaw the study's arm in The Gambia, Africa.
This was an "exciting" scientific development, he said.
The finding starts to shed new light on why some African people are genetically more susceptible than others to developing the disease.
The discovery would not directly contribute to the development of new vaccines, but provided "a glimpse of where future research may lead".
Although the gene variant was likely to be only one of many working together to cause increased Tb susceptibility, identifying such genetic variants could help with breakthroughs in understanding the relationship between humans and the disease, he said.
Using a technique known as a genome-wide association (GWA) study, the researchers scanned 333,000 genome sequence variants in more than 11,000 people living in Africa.
The study was led by Prof Adrian Hill, of the University of Oxford, England, and Prof Rolf Horstmann, of Germany.
