The Lancet Infectious Disease
Dec 2010  Volume 10 Number 12  Pages 813 – 892
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/issue/current

Review
Priorities for tuberculosis research: a systematic review
Jamie Rylance, Madhukar Pai, Christian Lienhardt, Paul Garner

Reliable and relevant research can help to improve tuberculosis control worldwide. In recent years, various organisations have assessed research needs and proposed priorities for tuberculosis. We summarise existing priority statements and assess the rigour of the methods used to generate them. We found 33 documents that specifically outline priorities in tuberculosis research. The top priority areas were drug development (28 articles), diagnosis and diagnostic tests (27), epidemiology (20), health services research (16), basic research (13), and vaccine development and use (13).