Objective To assess the safety and effectiveness of eflornithine as first line treatment for human African trypanosomiasis. Design Cohort study. Setting Control programme in Ibba, southern Sudan. Participants 1055 adults and children newly diagnosed with second stage disease in a 16 month period. Main outcome measures Deaths, severe drug reactions, and cure at 24 months. Results 1055 patients received eflornithine for 14 days (400 mg/kg/day in adults and 600 mg/kg/day in a subgroup of 96 children). Overall, 2824 drug reactions (2.7 per patient) occurred during hospital stay, 1219 (43.2%) after the first week. Severe reactions affected 138 (13.1%) patients (mainly seizures, fever, diarrhoea, and bacterial infections), leading to 15 deaths. Risk factors for severe reactions included cerebrospinal fluid leucocyte counts ≥100×10 9 /l (adults: odds ratio 2.6, 95% confidence interval 1.5 to 4.6), seizures (adults: 5.9, 2.0 to 13.3), and stupor (children: 9.3, 2.5 to 34.2). Children receiving higher doses did not experience increased toxicity. Follow-up data were obtained for 924 (87.6%) patients at any follow-up but for only 533 (50.5%) at 24 months. Of 924 cases followed, 16 (1.7%) died during treatment, 70 (7.6%) relapsed, 15 (1.6%) died of disease, 403 (43.6%) were confirmed cured, and 420 (45.5%) were probably cured. The probability of event free survival at 24 months was 0.88 (0.86 to 0.91). Most (65.8%, 52/79) relapses and disease related deaths occurred after 12 months. Risk factors for relapse included being male (incidence rate ratio 2.42, 1.47 to 3.97) and cerebrospinal fluid leucocytosis: 20-99×10 9

High incidence rates of notified TB under HAART in programmes held in poor-resource countries were observed; these were likely to include both undiagnosed prevalent TB at HAART initiation and subclinical TB developing during the immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome. This raises operational issues concerning TB diagnosis and treatment of TB/HIV-coinfected patients and prompts for urgent TB and HIV care integration.

This study shows that in a directly observed therapy-based MDR tuberculosis program, treatment interruptions at short intervals of ≥3 days directly affect treatment outcome.

The current treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is long, complex, and associated with severe and life-threatening side effects and poor outcomes. For the first time in nearly 50 years, there have been two new drugs registered for use in multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). Bedaquiline, a diarylquinoline, and delamanid, a nitromidoxazole, have received conditional stringent regulatory approval and have World Health Organization interim policy guidance for their use. As countries improve and scale up their diagnostic services, increasing number of patients with MDR-TB and extensively drug-resistant TB are identified. These two new drugs offer a real opportunity to improve the outcomes of these patients. This article reviews the evidence for these two new drugs and discusses the clinical questions raised as they are used outside clinical trial settings. It also reviews the importance of the accompanying drugs used with these new drugs. It is important that barriers hindering the use of these two new drugs are addressed and that the existing clinical experience in using these drugs is shared, such that their routine-use programmatic conditions is scaled up, ensuring maximum benefit for patients and countries battling the MDR-TB crisis.

Background Bedaquiline and delamanid offer the possibility of more effective and less toxic multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) treatment. With this treatment, however, some patients, remain at high risk for an unfavorable treatment outcome. The endTB observational study is the largest multicountry cohort of patients with rifampin-resistant/MDR-TB treated in routine care, according to WHO guidance, with delamanid-and/or bedaquiline-containing regimens. We report frequency of sputum culture conversion within six-months of treatment initiation and risk factors for non-conversion. Methods We included patients with a positive baseline culture who initiated a first endTB regimen prior to April 2018. Two consecutive negative cultures collected > 15 days apart constituted culture conversion. We used generalized mixed models to derive marginal predictions for the probability of culture conversion in key subgroups. Findings 1,109 patients initiated a multidrug treatment containing bedaquiline (63%), delamanid (27%) or both (10%). Of these, 939 (85%) experienced culture conversion within six months. In adjusted analyses, patients with HIV had a lower probability of conversion (0•73 [95% CI: 0•62, 0•84]) than patients without HIV (0•84 [95% CI: 0•79, 0•90]; p=0•03). Patients with both cavitary disease and highly positive sputum smear had a lower probability of conversion (0•68 [95% CI: 0•57, 0•79]) relative to patients without either (0•89; 95% CI: 0•84, 0•95; p=0•0004). Hepatitis C infection, diabetes mellitus/glucose intolerance, and baseline resistance were not associated with conversion.