Recent Advances in Anti Tubercular Drugs

Abstract

Tuberculosis is a scourge for human race for millennia with huge morbidity and mortality. Among the main obstacles to the global control of the disease are the HIV epidemic that has dramatically increased the risk for developing active TB, the increasing emergence of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), Extensive drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and the recalcitrance of persistent infections to treatment with conventional anti-TB drugs. Anti-tuberculosis drug resistance is a major public health problem that threatens the success of Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS), the WHO-recommended treatment strategy for detection and cure of TB, as well as global tuberculosis control. This has made the currently available anti tubercular drugs into less effective and futile tools to control tuberculosis. Not only to radically transform the fight against tuberculosis but also to shortening the current six to eight-month treatment to two months or less. This in turn will improve patient adherence, increase cure rates, and lessen the likelihood of patients developing drug resistance. New drugs are also needed to benefit the growing number of people around the globe who are co-infected with TB and HIV, as well as those who have been exposed to TB but are not yet ill with disease i.e. latent TB.