Tehmina Mustafa has research experience on various aspects of tuberculosis, including epidemiological, clinical and basic laboratory research on immunology, pathology, and development of new diagnostic tests for disease. She is the leader of the Tuberculosis Research Group at the Centre for International Health.

Medical specialist and consultant

Mustafa is a specialist in both pulmonary and internal medicine, and works as a consultant in respiratory diseases at the Department of Thoracic Medicine, Haukeland University Hospital.

Research

Mustafa studies immunepathogenesis of tuberculosis (TB), development of new diagnostic methods for paucibacillary TB cases, discovery of biomarkers for monitoring response to treatment, interaction between undernutrition and TB. Her main impact is in the development of better TB diagnostic methods. She has established research and academic partnerships with multiple institutions in Tanzania, Zanzibar, India and Pakistan, using funding from the Research Council of Norway and the Western Region Health Authorities of Norway. She has led and completed (2020) a multicenter international project in four countries on the implementation of a better diagnostic test for TB in routine clinical settings. She is currently working on increasing understanding the immunopathogenesis of TB based on studies using the human archival material from the Biobank at the Department of Pathology. 

Project leader and collaborator

Mustafa leads multi-centre projects on improved TB diagnosis and immunopathogenesis. See her project descriptions for more information

• Coordinator and Teacher- Global Tuberculosis Epidemiology and Intervention (INTH328,  INTH928, ELMED311)

• Coordinator and Teacher-Research Proposal Development (INTH330), UiB

• Teacher- Global health - challenges and responses- SDG303, UiB

• Teacher- Methods in global health research- INTH315, UiB
• Teacher- Medical students-respiratory medicine, UiB
• Teacher- Global Health Course for nursing students at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

Research Supervision

PhD students: 14 (completed 7, current 7)

Master students: 15 (completed 13, current 2) 

Medical students: completed 3

• An integrated multidisciplinary approach to improve diagnosis and management of tuberculosis in children (Funded by HelseVest/UiB).
• Better health through partnership in higher education and bilateral student mobility: Collaboration between Pakistan and Norway (NORPART)
• Pathogenesis of human Post-Primary Tuberculosis: Novel insights from Norwegian archival tissue material of the pre-antibiotic era
• Risk of infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a low tuberculosis prevalence setting
• Association between tuberculosis and obstructive lung diseases and allergies
• Biomarkers in tuberculosis: implications for improved diagnosis, monitoring treatment response, and host-directed therapies
• Proteomic and bioinformatic studies of the host therapeutic response to tuberculosis treatment
• Improving diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis by implementation of a sensitive and specific assay in routine tuberculosis diagnostics (Funding- Research Council of Norway, GLOVBVAC program)