Sreemoyee Chatterjee
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Written By: Sreemoyee Chatterjee | Published : August 20, 2018 11:02 AM IST
Steps are taken by forthcoming first-ever UN High Level Meeting (UNHLM) to #endTB. © Shutterstock
A new drug has been added to the list of priority drugs used for treating those suffering from multi drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), thanks to World Health Organisation (WHO) for placing bedaquiline along with levofloxacin/moxifloxacin and linezolid in Group A reserved for prioritised medicines. Till now, bedaquiline was placed under Group C which belonged to drugs used when patients become resistant to Group A and Group B drugs, according to the earlier guidelines.
WHO has also warned on safety issues and effectiveness of using bedaquiline on MDR-TB patients for over 6 months as it has not found any evidence yet. Also, WHO has highlighted that patients should restrict the use of linezoid, another efficient drug for MDR-TB due to its severe side effects that can cause temporary or permanent loss of hearing.
According to media reports, WHO does not any more recommend the use of kanamycin and capreomycin on TB patients because of increasing risk of treatment failure and relapse related to their use. It has suggested that the countries should no more use kanamycin and wait for its stock to get exhausted but immediately replace it with a comparably less harmful drug amikacin for short duration. This is because of kanamycin's ototoxic side effect, eventually resulting in hearing loss. According to WHO, the position of another drug, delamanid will be re-assessed once it receives and reviews individual patient data from the concerned trial.
With US based Johnson and Johnson's (J&J) Janssen holding the patents for producing bedaquiline at present till 2023, the drug is being imported from the same company and administered to around 1,000 patients in India under the conditional access programme of the government. According to the central government data, over 2,000 patients need this drug. The experts, however, say about 20,000 patients suffering from TB actually require the drug in India.
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