Tuberculosis bacteria can quickly become resistant to antibiotics, so the disease must be treated with combinations of drugs carefully designed to stave off resistance. After fifty years without any new TB drugs, two new medicines have finally been approved to treat some of the most severe drug-resistant strains of TB. With the current treatment regimen taking 2 years with many toxic side effects but yet only offering the chance of cure to about 50% there is an urgent need to use the unique opportunity of having new drugs available to radically change the current unsatisfactory treatment regimen. As well as addressing the programmatic issues with the current regimen, the treatment regimen needs to enhance and prolong the efficacy of these new drugs over the long term, experts have outlined eight key principles for designing future DR-TB drug regimens.

Authors

Grania Brigden, Bern-Thomas Nyang’wa, Philipp du Cros, Francis Varaine, Jennifer Hughes, Michael Rich, C Robert Horsburgh Jr, Carole D Mitnick, Eric Nuermberger, Helen McIlleron, Patrick PJ Phillips & Manica Balasegaram