A new study has talked about a newly developed drug that is capable of reducing the duration of tuberculosis treatment.
During the study, published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, researchers found that the newly developed antibiotic may be more effective than isoniazid, which is a decade-old drug, commonly prescribed to treat tuberculosis.
The new drug which is being now named AN12855 has so many advantages when compared to the traditional drug, as isoniazid needs conversion to its active form by a Mycobacterial enzyme, KatG, in order to kill the pathogen, but it usually creates some problems.
In some cases KatG becomes non-functional and it will prevent the drug from working. Gradually, this creates an easy way for the pathogen to develop drug resistance.
During the research, experts found that the newly developed AN12855 showed a lower tendency to develop resistance. It should be also noted that AN12855 resided in the tissues where Mycobacterium tuberculosis lived, thus killing these pathogens in the most effective manner.
"We discovered that the drugs differed dramatically with respect to their abilities to kill the pathogen in highly diseased tissues. Multidrug resistance is a further challenge to the mission to control TB globally. Collectively, our group has pioneered the use of new TB mouse efficacy models to help advance innovative new therapies designed to shorten the length of TB treatment," said Gregory T. Robertson, Assistant Professor at the Colorado State University in Fort Collins, the lead author of the study, Science Daily reports.
Traditional treatment methods of tuberculosis usually take more than six months and sometimes a year to complete the regime. Through this research, experts aim to reduce the treatment duration of tuberculosis considerably. As tuberculosis continues to be one of the most dreaded diseases in the modern world, scientists believe that more advancements are very much necessary in this arena to save more patients.
