‘Game changer’ tuberculosis drug cures 9 in 10

A new treatment for a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis can cure more than 90 percent of sufferers, according to a trial recently hailed as a “game changer” in the fight against the global killer. Doctors in Belarus—a country with one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the world—spent months treating patients with a new drug, bedaquiline, alongside other antibiotics. The results, seen exclusively by AFP, were startling: Of the 181 patients given the new drug, 168 were totally cured. The World Health Organization says currently only 55 percent of people with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are successfully treated. The Belarus trial success rate—93 percent—was largely replicated in bedaquiline trials in other countries in eastern Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia, according to abstracts seen by Agence France-Presse (AFP), due to be unveiled at a major tuberculosis conference later this week. “The results from this study confirm… that newer drugs like bedaquiline can cure and are game...