Tolerability of rifapentine-based regimens in latent tuberculosis infection treatment in the elderly

Management of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) is a core intervention in the pursuit of tuberculosis (TB) elimination and is one of the eight activities recommended by the World Health Organization [1]. We read with great interest the paper by Gao et al. [2] investigating two short-course regimens with rifapentine plus isoniazid for the treatment of LTBI in Chinese patients aged 50–70 years. They reported that due to the ever-increasing occurrence of adverse events, the 3-month once-weekly regimen and the 2-month twice-weekly regimen were truncated to 8 and 6 weeks, respectively. Gao et al. [2] concluded that the short regimens tested must be used with caution among the elderly because of a high frequency of adverse events. The findings reported by Gao et al. [2] were not consistent with our experience in Taiwan.

Source: European Respiratory Journal - March 17, 2019 Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Chan, P.-C., Lee, P.-H., Lu, M.-J., Huang, Y.-C., Feng, T.-Y., Chen, W.-W., Lee, C.-C., Huang, Y.-F., Chiang, C.-Y. Tags: Original Articles: Correspondence Source Type: research