The daily extra – tuberculosis can be cured with shorter treatments

EFE. Nearly half of the nearly ten million active TB patients diagnosed each year could be cured with shorter treatments than those currently recommended, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.

A new analysis by the University of California at San Francisco shows that more accurate treatments could be more effective in treating tuberculosis (bacterial infection), which kills 1.3 million people each year. the world

In the study – headed by Marjorie Imperial, a graduate student of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UCSF – we again analyzed data from three major trials that failed to demonstrate the effectiveness of four months of treatment to treat this infection. attacks the lungs.

UCSE scientists have pointed out that the reason for the failure of these previous trials is that all patients were treated the same way, regardless of the severity of tuberculosis.

In the new study, the study added, when these patients were retrospectively classified into three categories of disease status: minimal, moderate and severe, four-month treatment with drugs was particularly effective in 47% of patients with the disease. illness in a minimal state.

However, the four months were not effective in patients with moderate or severe tuberculosis.

"Our study shows that a stratified medicine approach can be applied in a way that can achieve shorter treatment for many tuberculosis patients," said Payam Nahid, of the Medical School of the aforementioned US university.

"A unique (therapeutic) approach leads to poor treatment of patients with severe disease or excessive treatment for patients with less advanced disease, as they take medications that could cause harm," Nahid added.

TB has been treated with antibiotics since the discovery of streptomycin in 1943, although the bacteria that cause the disease quickly developed resistance to this antibiotic.

During the last seventy and eighty years, other treatments with rifampicin have been developed, but there has also been resistance to this antibiotic, reminded scientists, which underlines the risk of this situation as tuberculosis kills more people today in the world than any other infectious disease. .