Team close to TB treatment ‘game-changer’

New drug cheaper, kills bacteria in fraction of the time

ANEW tuberculosis drug which could reduce the treatment duration of drug-resistant TB from two years to just six months, is closer as researchers enter the last leg of the promising clinical trial.

The TB Alliance announced yesterday it was advancing the first drug regimen to treat multidrug-resistant (MDR) and drugsensitive tuberculosis to a global phasethree clinical trial.

The UCT’s Lung Institute and Brooklyn Chest Hospital are leading sites in the phasetwo trial of the drug which includes 200 patients from six sites in Cape Town, Joburg and Durban, and two sites in Tanzania.

If successful, the PaMZ study – which is testing the existing TB drug pyrazinamide, a high-strength antibiotic moxifloxacin and an unregistered drug, PA-824 – could produce a drug 90 percent less expensive than the current regimen and treat patients in a fraction of the time.

In the latest results of the phase-two trial, published in the Lancet, researchers showed that the triple-drug therapy could kill TB bacteria in just eight weeks. It is the first study to test the same regimen on ordinary and drug-resistant TB.

Researchers working on the trial are already calling the new combination a “game changer”, arguing that it holds potential for those living with MDR TB.

Professor Rodney Dawson, a lead researcher and head of the UCT-based Centre for TB Research Innovation, said the latest results showed the new combination would not only improve TB treatment through a shorter regimen, but if successful would eliminate the painful injectable drugs used in the treatment of MDR patients.

Currently people with MDR TB have to endure a two-year course of tablets and injections, while those with ordinary TB take daily pills for six months.

MDR TB has a 50 percent cure rate in South Africa while its worst form, extreme drug-resistant (XDR) TB, has about a 20 percent cure rate.

The current TB treatment is almost 50 years old. The country has the world’s thirdlargest TB burden after India and China, with about 1 percent of the population developing active TB each year.

The phase-three trial will test the drugs on more than 1 500 patients in 15 countries, who are considered to have either ordinary TB or MDR.

Other countries testing it include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Haiti and Russia. – Health Writer

RESULTS SHOWED THE NEW COMBINATION WOULD, IF SUCCESSFUL ELIMINATE PAINFUL INJECTABLE DRUGS