**1. Introduction**

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Since its creation in the middle of the 20th century, the Internet has become the universal language of the digital world. All the capabilities it offers, such as electronic mail systems, information distribution, file sharing, multimedia streaming services and online social networking, have already been of service to billions of people around the world. In fact, if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, most people would struggle to manage their lives without it.

By providing millions of people with information that is constantly updated (24 hours a day, seven days a week) Internet has become the second source of information for the whole world, television still being the first one in most countries. It has also provided a unique way of communication, where a person in an isolated geographical location can instantly be in touch with thousands and maybe millions of other individuals around the world.

Scientists were among the first ones to explore all these capabilities. Now, we talk about data mining, terabytes and petabytes, algorithms – terms related to what we call "Big Data", the large volume of information generated by a variety of new technologies, ranging from Astronomy (telescope data), the Internet itself (more and more Facebook users every day) to Biology (cheaper and more efficient DNA sequencing technologies), among other areas of study and research. Some technologies and experiments, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland (perhaps the most important scientific tool ever built), produce an incredible volume of information, on the order of terabytes per second.

Databases containing DNA and protein sequences were created; institutions around the world developed websites to expose their work to the world; scientific magazines started their online versions. The world is connected as never before. This connection transcend the virtual realm

© 2013 Catanho and de Miranda; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

of the Internet: today, it is possible to travel from one side of the world to the other in just one day. Unfortunately, this has presented us a negative side: infectious agents may also cross the world in just about the same time.

**Global Tuberculosis Institute**. Located at the New Jersey Medical School, the institute provides expertise in program development, education, training and research to ministers of health, national TB programs and healthcare providers around the globe. URL: <http://

**Agency URL**

American Public Health Association http://www.apha.org/

Disease Programs http://www.lung.org/

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation http://www.gatesfoundation.org/

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) http://www.fda.gov/default.htm Institute for Tuberculosis Research http://www.tuberculosisdrugresearch.org/

AIDS/TB Epidemic http://www.tbhiv-create.org/

Diseases (NIAID) http://www.niaid.nih.gov/ National Library of Medicine, PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi Tuberculosis Net http://tuberculosis.net/

AllAfrica.com: TB News from Africa http://allafrica.com/tuberculosis/

JATA - Research Institute of Tuberculosis http://www.jata.or.jp/eindex/home.html

South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative http://www.satvi.uct.ac.za/

National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis http://www.trc-chennai.org/ Pakistan Anti TB Association http://www.patba.org/

Desmond Tutu TB Centre http://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/

TBC India http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/

Lung Disease (UNION) http://www.theunion.org/

Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology http://www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/ Pasteur Institute http://www.pasteur.fr

Health\_Sciences/English/Centres/dttc

Web Resources on TB: Information, Research, and Data Analysis

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53949

361

http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/activities/ surveillance/ european\_tuberculosis\_surveillance\_network/Pages/ index.aspx

www.umdnj.edu/globaltb/home.htm>

American Lung Association (ALA) Lung

CREATE: Consortium to Respond to the

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious

European Tuberculosis Surveillance Network

International Union Against Tuberculosis and

**Table 1.** Additional websites covering tuberculosis facts information and treatment research

**Americas**

**Africa**

**Asia and Oceania**

**Europe**

Tuberculosis is a global disease, with an estimated one-third of all people in the world contaminated by the bacillus, *Mycobacterium tuberculosis*. Although treatable, the large period of treatment (many abandon the therapy as soon as they feel better) together with the indis‐ criminate use of antibiotics is causing the spread of new, drug-resistant strains. Actually, as those familiar with epidemiology have already noticed, that is a remarkable similarity between the patterns of an epidemic or outbreak with the spread of a new piece of information throughout the internet.

However, there has also been a revolution in other areas: new high-throughput technologies, like genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics, offer a new, more integrated view of the metabolism and genetics of the organism studied, and of course *M. tuberculosis* was among the first to have its genome sequenced. Today, more than 30 different strains have been sequenced, as well as other organisms from the *Mycobacterium* genus. By comparing the genomes of virulent and non-virulent strains of TB, scientists may pinpoint particular genes and/or polymorphisms involved in this process; by examining transcriptome data, researchers may have an idea of the effects of a given drug in the bacillus' metabolism.

The purpose of this chapter is by no means to offer an exhaustive list of all the resources available on the Internet about TB, the topic of this book. This would be a massive and perhaps futile work, since the evolution of the internet occurs at a very fast pace. Rather, this chapter concentrates on a selection of the most important, relevant and stable websites with relevance to several aspects of TB, such as research, treatment, main Institutions, funding, and special‐ ized platforms. We think this should complement all the other information already presented in this book, offering the reader a more integrated view of the disease, and also access to new platforms and systems specialized in the analysis of data generated by a series of new technologies such as DNA sequencing.
