Shortening the Short Course of Tuberculosis Treatment

Abstract

One of the great satisfactions of managing infectious diseases is the remarkable and rapid efficacy of antibiotics. The first uses of penicillin in the treatment of pneumococcal pneumonia produced near miraculous results, and most bacterial infections can be cured with a few days of therapy. However, tuberculosis has been an outlier. A series of landmark studies performed over several decades showed that combination therapy could result in high rates of cure among patients with tuberculosis, but the best “short course” regimen — and the one that remains in use to this day — still requires 6 months of therapy with . . .