Tuberculosis: An Old Killer Proving Difficult To Best

31 Oct 2016

• By Benjamin Graham

With the announcement that tuberculosis surpassed HIV/AIDS in attributable deaths from infectious diseases worldwide, there has been a renewed interest in the development of new treatments and regimens for dealing with what is now the world’s number one infectious disease killer.

In 2015, the number of tuberculosis (TB) attributed deaths totalled 1.5 million, outnumbering the 1.2 million deaths due to HIV. While this represents a 47% fall in mortality from TB since 1990, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the vast majority of deaths that occurred were preventable, which is problematic given the estimated 9.6 million new cases of TB in 2015 alone.

Tuberculosis is a contagious airborne disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is largely a respiratory infection and up...