Tuberculosis can be resistant to treatment with several different drugs. Tests that identify which drugs someone’s TB is resistant to are critical to ensuring that people are not treated with drugs that don’t work for them, especially given the signific...
Some strains of the tuberculosis bacterium have mutated to become resistant to some of the drugs commonly used to treat TB. Accordingly, one of the first questions to ask when someone has TB is which drugs will be effective in fighting that person’s TB. Unfortunately, quick answers to this question are not always available. As a consequence, people are at times treated with drugs that won’t work for their particular strain of TB. What’s worse, these drugs often have significant side effects.
“That’s not appropriate. It’s not okay to treat people like that. There needs to be a better standard of care that’s implemented,” he says. In South Africa, diagnostic company Cepheid’s GeneXpert platform is widely used — Molbio’s Truenat is an alternative. GeneXpert tests come in the form of cartridges that are inserted into GeneXpert machines, of which we have many across South Africa. Cepheid also produces an XDR-TB cartridge that tests for resistance to isoniazid, the fluoroquinolones, and second-line injectables.
The third type, he says, is line probe assays, which are complex laboratory tests that are performed primarily in central labs, and test for resistance to several other second-line DR-TB drugs.
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