A team at Saint John Regional Hospital is looking to fight an old disease with traditional medicine. (CBC)

A team of researchers from Saint John is turning to traditional medicine to battle tuberculosis (TB) — what the World Health Organization calls a "global emergency."

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death for people infected with HIV, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to treat.

"Globally it's still amazing that one-third of the human population is infected with tuberculosis," said Dr. Duncan Webster, a physician and infectious disease specialist at the Saint John Regional Hospital.

With the help of a UNB chemist and biologist, Webster is hoping a local remedy will help battle the international disease.

"Part of the way to combat this global emergency is to develop new novel anti-TB medications," he said.

Together with University of New Brunswick Saint John professors Dr. John Johnson and Dr. Christopher Gray, the Natural Products Research Group looked into the benefits of a traditional medicinal plant used by the Eskasoni First Nation.

The Eskasoni would concoct a tea using cow parsnip to cure TB.

"They're probably getting just the right dose for it to have, you know, a therapeutic effect," said Gray, who is a natural products chemist at UNBSJ.

By extracting compounds found in the fungus of cow parsnip, he found activity similar to some of the properties found in TB antibiotics.

"It was a very exciting project," Gray said.

The team hopes their research will serve as a building block in finding another cure to a deadly disease.