The new strain known as Lineage 8 (L8) was found in a Rwandan patient who later died of the respiratory disease last year.
Lineage 8 was found to be the oldest strain among all the previous seven tuberculosis strains that are known so far.
The findings were published in Nature Communications, a renowned medical research publication and is titled: A Sister Lineage of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Complex Discovered in the African Great Lakes Region.
Lineage 8 seems to infect far fewer people than other strains and has a remarkably low level of spreading from infected people.
Jean-Claude Semuto Ngabonziza, who led the research at Rwanda Biomedical Center, believes that the extended research on the new strain would lead to a vaccine.
