Trial Signals Major Milestone in Hunt for New TB Drugs
By Katy Lenard, July 25, 2012
As the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) kicks off in Washington, DC this week, a new study reveals a neglected side of the fight against HIV – the battle to help people who have tuberculosis and the incredible lack of good drugs needed to cure them. Today, TB remains the largest killer of people with AIDS.
The study, published on Monday in The Lancet, announced the results of a clinical trial of a new TB drug combination that showed great promise for a more effective drug regimen that could be much shorter, simpler, and far less costly than existing drugs. In fact, the findings indicate that this drug “cocktail” could kill more than 99 percent of patients’ TB bacteria within two weeks.
The findings from researchers and the nonprofit TB Alliance (a Burness client) raise hope for a treatment breakthrough amid the growing and dangerous epidemic of drug-resistant forms of TB that, in some cases, are becoming untreatable. Currently, people with multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) require 18 to 24 months of treatment. Even those with ordinary TB need six months of taking drugs every day. This study, however, along with pre-clinical data, suggest that this novel combination could treat both drug-susceptible and some forms of drug-resistant TB in only four months.
The results also reveal progress in the pursuit of an antiretroviral-compatible TB treatment, which is critical to treating the millions of people with TB/HIV co-infection.
TB is one of the world’s most ancient and deadly infectious diseases, dating back thousands of years and found in remains of Egyptian mummies. When HIV/AIDS exploded in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, that epidemic triggered an historic jump in the number of TB deaths. An estimated 1.4 million people die from TB, and roughly 9 million people develop the disease, each year. One-third of all people on earth-nearly 2.5 billion people-have a latent form of TB.
The world has responded forcefully to fight AIDS, spending billions on research that has yielded more than two dozen drugs and several vaccine candidates now in development. Now the beginning of a bounty from TB research is emerging, led by these results from the TB Alliance.
AP/Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-say-novel-3-drug-combination-passes-first-stage-test-as-possible-treatment-for-tb/2012/07/23/gJQAFrd04W_story.html
Nature:
http://www.nature.com/news/tb-drugs-chalk-up-rare-win-1.11056
