MicrobeWorld

One in ten of the 2 billion people infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis will fall ill with tuberculosis in their lifetime, so finding effective drugs to treat TB and preventing the emergence of drug resistance are public health priorities of the highest order. Treating TB requires a combination of antibiotics, and a study just released by mBio examines the effect of combining a promising new drug with a drug currently used as a mainstay of TB therapy. Although the results were mixed for wild-type TB, the combination looks promising for treating cases of multi-drug resistant M. tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which are significantly more difficult to treat and overcome. The authors note that future work should compare the effectiveness of this combination of drugs with other combination therapies.