is long-standing but has been unrecognised until the publicity
associated with an outbreak of XDR-TB in South Africa, mainly
among HIV-positive individuals. Although the extent of the XDR-TB
problem is unknown, anecdotal evidence suggests that significant
problems exist in all urban centres of Europe, most acutely in some
Eastern European countries and in India [4]. Recently, Velayati et al.
[6] reported from Iran new forms of totally drug-resistant TB and
coined the phrase ‘super extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis’.
If the healthcare community is to be successful in controlling
this threat, we urgently need better tools for diagnosis and treatment
as an effective vaccine is still far in the future. To support
the efforts of TB control programmes we must shorten the duration
of treatment. Shorter regimens may improve adherence and
completion rates, reducing the opportunity for acquisition of new
resistance. However, therapy of the MDR-TB patient is problematic
and even with the best possible support [laboratory, directly
observed treatment, short-course (DOTS), etc.] and regardless of
aggressive therapy involving at least seven or eight drugs, mortality
is significant (ca. 15–20%). This is considerably higher if
the MDR-TB patient is co-infected with HIV and presents with
AIDS. Therapy of the XDR-TB patient is even more difficult. There
remains an urgent unmet need for new drugs to manage existing
patients with MDR- and XDR-TB. The progress that has been
made since the Cape Town Declaration is promising and a TB drug
pipeline exists, but the rate at which new molecules will trickle
down means that progress will come too late for the hundreds
of thousands of current patients struggling to survive their XDRTB.
Moreover, at the time of writing, no clinical trials for therapy
of XDR-TB with new agents are taking place (http://clinicaltrials.
gov/ct2/results?term=XDR+Tuberculosis). Consequently, there is
no completely effective therapy available, apart from the one that
we will describe in this article.