Lone parent obligations: destinations of lone parents after Income Support eligibility ends (Research report no 710)

"As part of the Lone Parent Obligations (LPO) changes, from November 2008 lone parents with a youngest child aged 12 or over were no longer entitled to receive Income Support (IS) solely on the grounds of being a lone parent. Since then, the age of the youngest child has reduced to ten and over from October 2009 and seven and over from October 2010. Lone parents who are no longer eligible for IS have been able to move to other benefits as appropriate, including Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). The JSA regime has been amended to include flexibilities for parents, for example, in the hours of work they are required to seek. The aim of this evaluation is to explore whether and how lone parent employment interventions provide an effective incentive to look for paid employment, alongside an effective package of support for workless lone parents, to enable them to find, enter and sustain paid employment." - Page 1

Identification of Human T-Cell Responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis Resuscitation-Promoting Factors in Long-Term Latently Infected Individuals ▿ †

The Mycobacterium bovis BCG vaccine is the only tuberculosis (TB) vaccine available, yet it provides limited protection against pulmonary TB in adults and fails to protect against TB reactivation. We hypothesized that immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis “resuscitation-promoting factors” (Rpfs), which are small bacterial proteins that promote proliferation of dormant mycobacteria, may be relevant in the human immune response to M. tuberculosis. In previous unpublished work, we found that Rpfs Rv0867c and Rv2389c induced gamma interferon (IFN-γ) production in the blood of TB patients' healthy household contacts in several different African populations. Here we examine these two dominant Rpf antigens in more detail and define the nature of the responding T-cell subsets. Multiparameter cytokine profiling showed that Rv2389c and, to a lesser extent, Rv0867c were recognized by mycobacterium-responsive healthy Dutch individuals; peptide-scanning revealed several epitopes, including a single immunodominant epitope in Rv2389c. Rv0867c and, to a lesser extent, Rv2389c Rpf-specific T-cell responses were maintained for decades in long-term M. tuberculosis nonprogressors. Prominent Rv0867c-specific double- and single-cytokine-producing CD8+ T-cell subset responses were found, including a large population of CD8+ effector memory and effector T-cell subsets. We conclude that M. tuberculosis Rpf antigens are important targets in the human immune response to M. tuberculosis and represent interesting TB vaccine candidate antigens