New treatment for multidrug-resistant TB shows 85% effectiveness
New treatment regimens for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) have shown early effectiveness in 85 percent of patients in a cohort that included many people with serious comorbidities that would have excluded them from clinical trials, according to the results of a new international study. The results, based on observational data from a diverse cohort of patients in 17 countries, underscore the need for expanded access to the recently developed TB medicines bedaquiline and delamanid. By contrast, the historical standard of care, still in use in much of the world, has approximately 60 percent treatment efficacy globally. The study was published July 24 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. “This is important evidence that these new regimens will work well for the true population suffering from this disease,” said lead study author Molly Franke, associate professor of global health and social medicine in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School. Global collaboration The...