Global tuberculosis prevention: should we start from the beginning?

Tuberculosis (TB), which is estimated to be the deadliest infectious disease worldwide with ~1.6 million deaths yearly [1], is a clinical issue due to the "ancient" diagnostics and drugs currently available. If compared with the management of other highly prevalent infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C virus infection, it is clear that the clinical approach for TB disease requires innovation, being still based on means with limited efficacy (e.g. treatment of multidrug-resistant TB; MDR-TB), and characterised by the denominator "long duration": conventional bacteriological diagnosis, therapy for the drug-susceptible disease (i.e. 6 months) and MDR-TB (i.e. >20 months) [2–7].
Source: European Respiratory Journal - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Editorials Source Type: research