person:immunology

  • Pain drug can kill resistant tuberculosis | e! Science News
    http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/09/10/pain.drug.can.kill.resistant.tuberculosis

    An off-patent anti-inflammatory drug that costs around two cents for a daily dose in developing countries has been found by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College to kill both replicating and non-replicating drug resistant tuberculosis in the laboratory — a feat few currently approved TB drugs can do, and resistance to those is spreading. Their findings, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to a potential new therapy for the more than 500,000 people worldwide whose TB has become resistant to standard drug treatments. But the researchers worry that the effective drug, oxyphenbutazone, may never be tested in TB clinical trials.

    (...) “It is difficult today to launch clinical studies on a medication that is so outdated in the United States, that it is mainly used here in veterinary medicine to ease pain,” says the study’s senior author, Dr. Nathan, chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology, and the director of The Abby and Howard Milstein Program in the Chemical Biology of Infectious Disease at Weill Cornell. “No drug firm will pay for clinical trials if they don’t expect to make a profit on the agent. And that would be the case for an off-patent drug that people can buy over the counter for pain in most of the world.”

    He adds that oxyphenbutazone, best known under the trademark name of Tandearil, does have some established toxicities, “and is not a drug you should take for aches and pains if a safer alternative is available.”

    #cdp #santé #tuberculose #résistante #pharma #brevets