New research shows a common antibiotic could be useful in accelerating recovery from tuberculosis.

Around 10 million people develop tuberculosis (TB) each year globally, making it one of the world’s leading causes of death from a single infectious agent. 

The standard anti-TB treatment requires a regimen of at least six months of antimicrobial drugs, but even effective treatment has allowed drug-resistant TB to be an increasing public health threat. Also, TB survivors have approximately three to four times greater mortality than their local population.

But researchers in Singapore have now discovered that a common antibiotic, doxycycline, when used in combination with TB drug treatment, reduces the size of lung cavities and accelerates markers of lung recovery.

In recent human trials, the treatment was found to be safe, with side effects similar to patients on placebo pills. 

The study shows promise in delivering a new standard-of-care which can potentially prevent long term complications and the study team is seeking funds for a fully-powered larger scale Phase 3 trial to verify these findings.

“Pulmonary TB patients tend to suffer from lung damage after TB, which is associated with mortality, and poorer quality of life. Doxycycline is a cheap and widely available antibiotic that can decrease lung damage, and potentially improve quality of life for these patients,” said Assistant Professor Catherine Ong, Principal Investigator of the study and member of the Infectious Diseases Translational Research Programme (TRP) at NUS Medicine. 

Professor Paul Tambyah, who was also involved in the study, commented; “While we have been able to successfully treat most cases of TB for the last few decades, we have seen many people suffer the complications of the lung damage from the original TB infection. If this common drug, doxycycline, can help prevent the complications of ‘Long TB’ (to use a term currently in vogue), this will really help a lot of patients in Singapore and worldwide.”

The study is accessible here.