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| EDITORIAL |
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| Year : 2015 | Volume
: 3
| Issue : 1 | Page : 1-2 |
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New drugs for treating tuberculosis!!!
Kaushik Saha
Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Burdwan Medical College, Burdwan, West Bengal, India
| Date of Web Publication | 12-Dec-2014 |
Correspondence Address:
Kaushik Saha
Rabindra Pally, 1st Lane, P. O. Nimta, Kolkata 700 049, West Bengal
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2320-8775.146841
How to cite this article:
Saha K. New drugs for treating tuberculosis!!!
. J Assoc Chest Physicians 2015;3:1-2 |
The stop tuberculosis (TB) partnership developed as a global community in 2000 to eliminate TB, recognizing it as a global public health problem. Several Working Groups advance the mission of the stop TB Partnership. The Stop TB Strategy has been offset by the rampant re-emergence of drug-resistant TB, in particular fluoroquinolone-resistant multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB. In 2001, the Working Group on New Drugs (WGND) established to develop new and affordable drugs for the treatment of TB. The WGND conducts support activities and acts as a forum to facilitate global collaborations for the development of new TB drugs.
Today's TB drug regimen takes too long to be effective and requires too many medications. Treatment of drug-sensitive disease requires 6-9 months whereas treatment of drug-resistant TB is even lengthier, taking 18-24 months or longer. [1] Second-line drugs are also much more toxic and considerably more expensive than the standard first-line anti TB-regimen. Furthermore, current first-line treatment regimens are not compatible with certain common antiretroviral (ARV) therapies used to treat HIV/AIDS. Therefore, new drugs are needed that will be effective in treating children, and latent TB infection (an asymptomatic infection), and will be compatible with ARV therapy. Additionally, new regimens need to be affordable and easily managed in the field.
A robust and sustainable pipeline of TB drug candidates and discovery programs is essential for the successful development of new TB drug regimens. After 50 years of no antituberculosis drug development, a promising pipeline is emerging through the repurposing of old drugs, re-engineering of existing antibacterial compounds, and discovery of new compounds. After decades of quiescence in the development of antituberculosis medications, bedaquiline and delamanid have been conditionally approved for the treatment of drug-resistant TB, while several other novel compounds (AZD5847, PA-824, SQ109 and sutezolid) have been evaluated in phase II clinical trials. [2] A range of novel antituberculosis drugs are in preclinical development, several phase 2 and 3 trials are underway, and use of adjunct therapies is being explored for drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB [Figure 1]. New drugs and new combination regimens in clinical trials are expected to increase therapeutic efficacy and shorten treatment duration in both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB.
| References | |  |
| 1. | World Health Organization. Multidrug and Extensively Drug-Resistant TB (M/XDR-TB): 2010 Global Report on Surveillance and Response. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2010. Available from: http://www.whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599191_eng.pdf. [Last accessed on 2014 Jun 13].  |
| 2. | Sloan DJ, Davies GR, Khoo SH. Recent advances in tuberculosis: New drugs and treatment regimens. Curr Respir Med Rev 2013;9:200-10. [ PUBMED] |
[Figure 1]
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