Mumbai: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first drug for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB), the decade’s most dreaded disease and one without any effective treatment until now.
The new drug, Sirturo, developed by US drug maker and researcher Janssen Therapeutics Inc., was granted fast-track approval through a priority review, FDA said in a statement on Monday.
Multi-drug resistant TB is a result of bacteria developing resistance to the traditional antibiotics used to cure regular TB, leaving patients suffering from the disease without an effective therapeutic option.
Nearly nine million people around the world and 10,528 people in the US were affected with TB in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a US public health agency.
Prevalence of the disease in India is more severe, and the new drug may prove most useful in developing countries including India, though the price and availability of the drug maybe a challenge.
