Latest XDR-TB Stories

Results from an observational study evaluating a new anti-TB drug have found that the treatment can improve outcomes and reduce mortality among patients with both MDR-TB and XDR-TB. The research, published online ahead of print today (27 September 2012) in the European Respiratory Journal, suggests a drug called delamanid could have a public health benefit for MDR-TB and also for XDR-TB, as few effective treatment options are currently available. Over the past two decades,...

Healthcare workers in South Africa are at a significantly increased risk of developing drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, in a trend which threatens to further exacerbate the already beleaguered healthcare systems in sub-Saharan countries, according to results of a new study. Researchers say the results underscore the urgent need for stringent TB screening policies among healthcare workers in these areas.Keertan Dheda, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of...

U.S. researchers said on Thursday that two existing drugs used in combination appear to offer great promise against the most dangerous form of tuberculosis, Reuters reported.Doctors say the combination of AstraZeneca's MERREM I.V., also called meropenem, and clavulanate, sold by GlaxoSmithKline in combination with amoxicillin as the drug Augmentin, killed laboratory-grown strains of TB in clinical trials.Researchers wrote in the journal Science that the combination worked in lab dishes...

New research on drug-resistant tuberculosis found that the hard-to-treat disease results in death for half of patients who get it.South Korean researchers presented the study "“ one of few to track survival rates from the condition called extensively drug-resistant TB "“ in the latest edition of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.The study consisted of 1,407 patients who had either multidrug resistant TB, which is the most aggressive because it resists at least...

Aggressive treatment involving a combination of drugs may be the cure for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, researchers report.Writing in The Lancet, researchers found that despite fears of being untreatable, TB could be cured with a combination of at least five drugs.Multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB is resistant to the most commonly used treatments isoniazid and rifampin.However, these treatments are ineffective when used to battle extremely resistant (XDR) TB.The recent study...

In the first statewide study of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) in the United States, California officials have identified 18 cases of the dangerous and difficult-to-treat disease between 1993 and 2006, and 77 cases that were one step away from XDR TB. The study appears in the August 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.California reports almost 3,000 cases of tuberculosis annually, the largest number of TB cases of any U.S. state. California has...

Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, can be commuted in an individualized outpatient therapy program, researchers in Peru said. The study, conducted in Peru from 1999 to 2002, showed that more than 60 percent of XDR-TB patients not co-infected with HIV were cured after receiving the bulk of their personalized treatment at home or in community-based settings. Lead author Carole Mitnick of the Harvard Medical School said that in some parts of the world, however, patients with...