Some patients with highly drug-resistant tuberculosis could benefit from a shorter treatment with fewer drugs, while others may warrant more aggressive therapy, according to the findings of a new study led by an international group of researchers, including scientists from Harvard Medical School, and conducted across six countries in Asia, Africa, and South America.
The study is the first-ever clinical trial to focus exclusively on people with pre-extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (pre-XDR-TB), a hard-to-treat form of the disease that is more challenging to cure than multi-drug resistant TB but not as extremely impervious to medicines as the most dreaded form of the infection known as extensively drug-resistant TB.
Pre-XDR-TB is resistant to rifampin—the most potent first-line drug used against TB—and fluoroquinolone, which thus far has been the most potent second-line TB drug.