A once-daily oral regimen known as PaMZ shows promise in both drug-sensitive and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), new research shows. After 8 weeks of treatment, more patients treated with PaMZ than with the standard TB protocol were culture-negative (71% vs 38%), said Dan Everitt, MD, senior medical officer at the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development. This could be "a paradigm change for shortening and simplifying drug therapy for drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB," he said.
Drug-resistant patients typically require 5 to 7 drugs given over a 2-year period, with daily injections administered in the first 6 months. It was conducted at 8 sites in South Africa and Tanzania. The primary end point was the rate of change in colony-forming units from sputum on solid culture over an 8-week period.About 20% of the 181 study participants was coinfected with HIV.Drug-sensitive patients…
