An especially dangerous type of tuberculosis may
have met its match.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced
August 14 that it has approved the antibiotic pretomanid to help tackle what’s
called extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. This form of the disease is
resistant to at least four of the main TB drugs, and treatment often fails: Only
around 34 percent of infected patients typically survive, the World Health
Organization says.
Becoming ill with this type of TB “can be a death
sentence — until now,†says William Bishai, a tuberculosis researcher at the
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the drug’s
development.
The current treatment requires patients to take as
many as eight antibiotics orally, and sometimes by injection, for 18 months or
more. By contrast, the new antibiotic is paired with two other previously
approved drugs, bedaquiline and linezolid, in a six-month course of pills.
Ninety-five of 107 patients who had the highly resistant disease and took this
drug regimen recovered, according to the TB Alliance, the nonprofit
organization that developed pretomanid. The drug is only the third since the
1960s to be approved for tuberculosis, which is caused by Mycobacterium
tuberculosis.Â
Tuberculosis sickened an estimated 10 million people
in 2017 (SN: 10/27/18, p. 15). Around 458,000 cases were multidrug-resistant,
unresponsive to the two most powerful TB drugs (SN Online: 4/30/14). Of those
cases, about 8.5 percent, or roughly 39,000, were extensively drug-resistant,
according to WHO.
Pretomanid has been tested only in patients with
highly resistant TB. More research is needed to determine whether the drug
could be useful for the vast majority of patients who have TB that’s more
receptive to treatment, says Bishai. Perhaps the standard regimen of multiple
drugs taken for six months could be shortened by including the new antibiotic,
he says. “We’re delighted to have this new drug pretomanid, but there’s a lot
more to do.â€
Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-fda-approved-drug-takes-aim-deadly-form-tuberculosis
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