Shortened Preventive Tuberculosis Therapy Regimens Proved Safe and Effective, Study Finds

Researchers in PLOS Medicine reported that shortened regimens of preventive tuberculosis (TB) therapy are “safe and effective options for preventing active TB infections.” CIDRAP has the news.

The trial that allowed researchers to arrive at this conclusion assigned “500 people age 15 and older without HIV who had household or occupational exposure to individuals with confirmed TB infection to receive either one or three months of isoniazid and rifapentine (HP; 1HP or 3HP).” Both regimens have been found to be effective and are “significantly shorter than the standard regimen (six to nine months of isoniazid), which has been the mainstay of TB preventive therapy (TPT) for decades but has had ‘abysmal’ uptake and poor completion rates.”

The “primary outcomes of the trial were successful completion of more than 90% of medication in the regimens and safety.” Both of the regimens had high completion rates, and adverse reactions were “mostly mild or moderate, with targeted safety events or treatment discontinuation because of side effects occurring in 16.1% of patients in the 1HP group and 10.4% in the 3HP arm. Neither regimen was considered superior to the other.”

The coauthor of the study wrote that “preventing TB with short courses of well-tolerated medicines ensures that millions more people around the world can be protected from the devastating consequences of TB disease.”