“It came to world attention in 2006 in a study in South Africa where a number of patients were found to have this extensive resistance to tuberculosis drugs, and they had a very high mortality rate. And so it became recognized as a major problem for tuberculosis,” he said.
In fact, the mortality rate was as high at 90 percent in patients also infected with HIV.
Standard TB treatment can take up to six months. MDR-TB treatment can last between 18 and 24 months.
So researchers knew that more drugs were needed to tackle the various forms of TB. They had heard of some informal studies using the drug linezolid on TB patients with some success. But there was no formal study.
Linezolid is a drug that’s already on the market and it’s approved for the use of resistant bacteria, which we call gram-positive bacteria that don’t respond to typical antibiotics.
To find out, researchers tested linezolid on 41 patients with XDR-TB. The patients already had been treated for six months with the best TB drugs available, but failed to respond. Chen said linezolid was added to their regimen.
“We found that adding the linezolid had a significant effect and that most of the patients converted their sputum from showing tuberculosis to not having tuberculosis in the sputum by six months. About 87 percent of the patients became negative for tuberculosis within six months. So it showed a very good response,” he said.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25