Latest Isoniazid Stories

A key enzyme in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that enables the microbe to reproduce rapidly could be a golden target for new drugs against tuberculosis (TB), according to a study published in Microbiology on 17 November.The human equivalent of this enzyme has been targeted in some cancer treatments as well as in immunosuppressive chemotherapies. Scientists at the University of Birmingham have now shown that inhibiting the same enzyme in M. tuberculosis effectively kills the bacterial cells.The...

DALLAS -- Two new tuberculosis studies by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers provide good news and bad news about the bacterium that infects nearly a third of the world's population and a disease that kills nearly 2 million people each year. The good news: A type of blood pressure medication shows promise at overcoming some drug-resistant tuberculosis, at least in the laboratory. The bad news: The Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium, which causes the disease, might be resistant to...

By going 'back to the drawing board,' 2 teams advance on answers to TB epidemicWhen people get exposed to the mycobacterium responsible for tuberculosis (TB), some will become sick with a disease that is a major cause of mortality around the world while others simply don't. Now, researchers reporting in the March 5th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, can point to one important reason for this variation in susceptibility or resistance: genetic differences among individuals...

Scientists have identified a strain of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis that thrives in the presence of rifampin, a front-line drug in the treatment of tuberculosis. The bacterium was identified in a patient in China and is described in a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Chongqing Pulmonary Hospital, Lanzhou University and Fudan University. The researchers determined that the bacteria grew poorly in the absence of the antibiotic rifampin and better...

MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Patients reported C1-esterase inhibitor (C1-INH) concentrate is an effective therapy in treating acute swelling attacks at any body location for HAE, a rare and serious genetic disorder, according to data presented today at the 2009 American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Meeting. The results come from a self-reported survey of patients conducted in parallel with the ongoing, prospective, open label International...

New TAU formulation may slow down Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseasesWorking like an architect, Prof. Hagit Eldar-Finkelman of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine is "building" a new drug, L803-MTS, to treat a number of central nervous system (CNS) diseases like Alzheimer's. In pre-clinical studies, it also shows promise against Parkinson's, Huntington's and diabetes.L803-MTS is based on the physical structure of the GSK3 protein, which plays a causative...

International guidelines for treating tuberculosis are due for specific improvements, according to two research papers published this week in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.Public health programs in many countries adhere to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines as the authoritative recommendations for treating tuberculosis (TB). But do these guidelines reflect the best available evidence? To answer this question, Dick Menzies of McGill University in Montreal and colleagues...

Clinical Activity Of TMC207 shows ATP-Synthase is a Viable Target for treatment of TB MECHELEN, Belgium, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Interim results from an ongoing phase 2, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of the investigational drug TMC207 for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) were published in the New England Journal of Medicine today. TMC207 is being developed by Tibotec BVBA. The data show that the addition of TMC207 for eight weeks to a 5-drug background...

New estimates of the likelihood that a latent case of tuberculosis (TB) will become active have resulted in a roughly 50 percent increase over previous estimates of the number of people needed to be screened (NNS) to prevent an active infection, limiting the cost effectiveness of screening in many Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-defined risk groups, according to an analysis conducted by experts in the epidemiology of the disease.The research will be presented at the American...

British medical scientists say the discovery of a large number of slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria might lead to new anti-TB drugs. Until now it was thought that M. tuberculosis bacteria in the lungs of TB patients were rapidly multiplying. However recent research by Simon Waddell and colleagues from St George's University of London and the University of Leicester revealed the tuberculosis bacteria in the sputum of TB patients resemble bacteria that are growing very slowly or...