Drug Resistant Tuberculosis News and Research

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Improving tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis: an interview with Professor Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD

TB is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Nearly 9 million people develop TB every year, and TB kills nearly 1.4 million individuals each year. While the incidence of TB has steadily declined in the west, it remains a huge public health problem in many developing countries, with India having the highest burden.

15 Feb 2013

U.S. News examines growing threat of drug-resistant TB

U.S. News & World Report examines the growing epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), highlighting a "new paper published earlier this week in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal warn[ing] that the first cases of 'totally drug-resistant' tuberculosis have been found in South Africa and that the disease is 'virtually untreatable."

13 Feb 2013

CDC, State Department, World Bank should lead fight against fake, substandard TB drugs

"Thanks to billions of dollars spent on diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis (TB) over the past decade, deaths and infections are slowly declining," but "fake and poorly made antibiotics are being widely used to treat tuberculosis," according to a study "to be published Tuesday in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease," Roger Bate, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and an author of the study, writes in a New York Times opinion piece.

6 Feb 2013

TB test offers rapid detection of TB and drug-resistant strains according to new study

A diagnostic test for tuberculosis (TB) can accurately and quickly detect both TB and drug-resistant strains, according to a new study. The authors of a new systematic review assessing the diagnostic accuracy of the Xpert® MTB/RIF test published in The Cochrane Library say their study can provide timely advice for clinicians and policymakers in countries where TB is a major public health problem.

31 Jan 2013

Survey finds shortage of TB medicines in U.S.; Consequences similar to lack of access in developing countries, advocate says

"More than 80 percent of health departments in the United States that treat tuberculosis [TB] resistant to standard treatment have trouble obtaining the drugs they need to cure the disease, according to a national survey released on Thursday," Reuters reports.

18 Jan 2013

Researchers uncover new way that some bacteria survive when under siege by antibiotics

Researchers have uncovered a new way that some bacteria survive when under siege by antibiotics.

4 Jan 2013

Fatal imbalance between global disease burden and drug development

Despite important progress in research and development (R&D) for global health over the past decade, only a small fraction of new medicines developed between 2000 and 2011 were for the treatment of neglected diseases, highlighting the 'fatal imbalance' between global disease burden and drug development for some of the world most devastating illnesses, said Doctors Without Borders/M-decins Sans Fronti-res (MSF) and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), in an analysis to be presented today at an international conference aimed at spurring medical innovations for these diseases.

13 Dec 2012

AstraZeneca, Case Western Reserve initiate AZD5847 Phase 2a trial in TB

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, today announced the first patient enrolled in a Phase 2a trial to assess the effectiveness of AZD5847, a new test drug for patients with tuberculosis (TB), including patients with HIV co-infection.

12 Dec 2012

IRIN examines intellectual property protection in South Africa

IRIN examines how patents and intellectual property protection in South Africa affects patients' access to medicines. "A form of intellectual property protection, patents are typically awarded to companies that can prove their product is new," IRIN writes, adding, "Not so in South Africa, say activists and researchers, who claim the country's patent system allows pharmaceutical companies to apply for new patents on existing drugs based on immaterial changes -- like adding table salt to a formulation or changing a pill's color."

7 Nov 2012

Linezolid proves effective in treating drug-resistant TB

When tested in patients hospitalized with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) unresponsive to previous treatment, linezolid, an antibiotic used to treat severe bacterial infections, proved largely effective when added to the patients' ongoing TB treatment regimen.

19 Oct 2012

Trial results of first new TB vaccine candidate in 90 years expected next year

"Researchers will find out early next year whether the first new vaccine against tuberculosis [TB] for 90 years protects against a disease that was once neglected but is now resurgent worldwide," Financial Times reports.

18 Oct 2012

Natural antibiotic to treat tuberculosis

A natural product secreted by a soil bacterium shows promise as a new drug to treat tuberculosis report scientists in a new study published in EMBO Molecular Medicine. A team of scientists working in Switzerland has shown how pyridomycin, a natural antibiotic produced by the bacterium Dactylosporangium fulvum, works.

17 Sep 2012

Drug-resistant tuberculosis: an interview with Sven Hoffner

In contrast to drug-susceptible tuberculosis, which can be cured with available drug therapies, drug-resistant, and especially multi-drug resistant, tuberculosis is much more difficult to cure and it takes a much longer time for patients to become non-infectious.

17 Sep 2012

Oxyphenbutazone can kill drug resistant TB

An off-patent anti-inflammatory drug that costs around two cents for a daily dose in developing countries has been found by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College to kill both replicating and non-replicating drug resistant tuberculosis in the laboratory -- a feat few currently approved TB drugs can do, and resistance to those is spreading.

11 Sep 2012

Wall Street Journal examines drug-resistant TB

The Wall Street Journal examines global efforts to stop the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) strains, stating, "Global health officials view the emergence of incurable cases of tuberculosis in India as a worrisome evolution in a trend they have been concerned and intensely frustrated about for years -- the rise of drug resistant forms of tuberculosis around the world."

10 Sep 2012

History of TB policy shows need for care, investment equity in developed, developing countries

In a 200th anniversary article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Salmaan Keshavjee of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Paul Farmer of Partners in Health "seek to elucidate the reasons for the anemic response to drug-resistant tuberculosis [TB] by examining the recent history of tuberculosis policy," they write.

7 Sep 2012

Janssen receives FDA Priority Review for bedaquiline NDA to treat MDR-TB

Janssen Research & Development, LLC (Janssen) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Priority Review to the New Drug Application (NDA) for bedaquiline (TMC207) to treat pulmonary, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in adults as part of combination therapy.

6 Sep 2012

Janssen submits bedaquiline MAA with EMA for treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis

Janssen-Cilag International NV (Janssen) today announced it has submitted a Marketing Authorisation Application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) seeking conditional approval for the use of the investigational drug bedaquiline (TMC207) as an oral treatment, to be used as part of combination therapy for pulmonary, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in adults.

31 Aug 2012

Drug-resistant tuberculosis levels described as alarming by international study

A large, international study published Online First in The Lancet reveals alarming levels of tuberculosis (TB) that are resistant to both first-line and second-line drugs. The findings show high prevalence of resistance to at least one second-line drug (43.7%) among multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB patients from eight countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Worse still, the study found higher than expected overall levels of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB.

30 Aug 2012

Researcher describes structure and function of tuberculosis efflux pump regulator

Edward Yu took note of the facts - nearly 2 million deaths each year, 9 million infected each year, developments of multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant and now totally drug-resistant strains - and decided to shift his research focus to tuberculosis.

23 Aug 2012