A new study has concluded that a shorter tuberculosis treatment regimen could save millions of lives over the next three decades. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) examined the potential benefits of a two-month drug regimen, as opposed to current six to nine month treatments. In the South-East Asia region alone, new therapies could prevent up to 11 million new TB cases, and 5 million deaths, through 2030.
According to Joshua Salomon, assistant professor of international health at HSPH and lead author of the study, "Even in optimistic scenarios where current efforts expand dramatically, there is enormous potential to enhance global TB control with new technologies. Continued progress against TB will require aggressive efforts to develop new, effective and affordable drugs in parallel to the ongoing campaign to expand the reach of current control strategies."
The study, entitled "Prospects for Advancing Tuberculosis Control Efforts through Novel Therapies," was published today in the August edition of Public Library of Science Medicine. It argues that new, faster-acting TB drug therapies would simplify treatment, improve patient outcomes, and reduce transmission of new infections.
From HSPH:
Researchers developed a mathematical model of TB to study what impact shortening treatment durations might have on the course of the epidemic. The results showed that shorter regimens could produce dramatic benefits at the population level by reducing patients’ opportunities to default from treatment and therefore improving their own outcomes as well as curtailing transmission to others. Other possible indirect benefits were explored in alternative scenarios in which new regimens are accompanied by wider case detection, which might arise if shorter therapies can free up scarce financial and human resources, simplify program administration and patient monitoring and prompt more people to seek care.
Applying the model to the South-East Asia region, where around one-third of global cases and deaths occur, the researchers found that a two-month regimen introduced by 2012 could double or even triple the current rates of decline in new cases and deaths, which would translate into total reductions between 2012 and 2030 of up to 40 percent of the numbers expected with continuing use of current drugs.