A phase II study has shown that the new antibiotic moxifloxacin, in combination with other drugs, could shorten the time needed to cure tuberculosis by several months. The findings are reported in Article in this week's edition of The Lancet, written by Professor Richard E Chaisson, Center for Tuberculosis Research, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA, and colleagues.

The development of new drug regimens for tuberculosis is an urgent global health priority. Although so-called short-course treatment can effectively cure drug-susceptible tuberculosis in 6 months, a large proportion of patients in whom tuberculosis is diagnosed do not complete a course of treatment. New drugs that shorten the duration of tuberculosis treatment would substantially reduce the likelihood of disease recurrence and death caused by inadequate therapy. Additionally, since every year there are 500 000 reported cases of tuberculosis caused by strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis that are resistant to the key first-line drugs isoniazid and rifampicin, agents that are active in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are also needed. Moxifloxacin is a promising new antibiotic that could add to the effects of existing antituberculosis drugs.

In this randomised controlled trial assessed 170 tuberculosis-positive patients at one hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. All were receiving a standard of combination of first line tuberculosis drugs, and were then randomised to receive as the fourth drug in their regimen either moxifloxacin 400mg with an ethambutol placebo (85 patients), or ethambutol (15-20 mg/kg) plus moxifloxacin placebo (85 patients) five days per week for eight weeks…