Bacterial biomarkers that predict early treatment success in tuberculosis cases have been identified in a new study published in BMC Medicine. The findings could have positive implications for both treatment time and costs moving forward.
There were 9 million new cases and 1.5 million deaths from TB in 2013 and predictive biomarkers for treatment efficacy are essential to help understand how the bacilli persists through treatment in drug-resistant strains of the infection.
The study used genome-wide transcriptional profiling to map mRNA signatures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli (M.tb). The sputa of 15 patients were analysed before and 3, 7 and 14 days after the start of standard regimen drug treatment to understand why some bacteria survive through months of drug treatment.
The study showed for the first time that by testing patients' sputum, specific changes could be identified in M.tb two weeks after starting drug therapy that could predict the success of treatment six weeks later.
Dr. Simon Waddell, working with a team of researchers from the UK, South Africa and Finland said of the discovery: "Profiling TB bacteria in this way may help find predictive markers of treatment success that are desperately needed in clinical trials and in the clinic. This would reduce the cost of drug trials needed to test new drugs for TB, and allow doctors to quickly stratify patients who are not responding to drug therapy."