September 25, 2019
Treating tuberculosis (TB) is an arduous task, but a recent breakthrough could be a game-changer. Only 34 percent of patients with treatment-resistant TB are cured, including some taking 20 or more pills every day for at least a year and a half.
That’s why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a new drug to tackle treatment-resistant TB has been hailed as a monumental breakthrough. TB is the leading infectious disease killer in the world, taking the lives of 1.6 million people a year. The new drug, Pretomanid, taken in combination with other anti-TB drugs bedaquiline and linezolid, demonstrated an 89 percent success rate in a clinical trial in South Africa; Pretomanid requires only a six-month oral regimen.
Read the full op-ed in The Hill here.