Two new drugs hold promise for tuberculosis patients

tuberculosis is a common and deadly disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It leads to 1.6 to 2 million deaths annually. Worse still, most of the bacterial strains are resistant to multiple drugs and their numbers are rising. The class of compounds called b-lactams, which also contains penicillin, is used to treat a variety of bacterial infections. But when it comes to tuberculosis it fails. Researchers have hit upon a combined dose of two compounds from the same class that shows promise in the unabated war on tuberculosis.

b-lactams work by arresting bacterial cell wall synthesis. In case of tuberculosis, the bacterial enzyme b-lactamase degrades the drugs and renders them ineffective.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, US, have shown that a combined dose of two b-lactams