The World Trade Organization committee on intellectual property rights met this week and addressed a request by least developed countries for an extension of the period to enforce WTO intellectual property rules. LDCs want that the extension be extinguishable only after a country ceases to be considered as ‘least developed’, which developing countries largely supported. Developed countries, however, were hesitant about the terms of the proposed extension.

A new two-drug combination of rifapentine and moxifloxacin can allow tuberculosis (TB) treatment to be taken once-weekly during the four-month continuation phase, Dr Amina Jindani of St George’s University Medical School, London, told the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2013) in Atlanta, on 6 March.

Rifampicin, a key drug in tuberculosis (TB) treatment, can be tolerated at much higher doses than used in current clinical practice – suggesting that much higher drug levels may lead to a more rapid treatment response, allowing the treatment course to be shortened without the need for new drugs in first-line treatment, according to findings presented at the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2013) in Atlanta this week.

ATLANTA, GA — Andreas Diacon from Stellenbosch University in Cape Town updated the audience at the 2013 CROI  on Wednesday about the status and challenges in TB drug development.  The good news is that while still inadequate, the TB drug pipeline is larger than it has been in decades.

Pakistan is the world’s fourth highest multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) burden country and the fifth highest TB burden country, said a World Health Organisation (WHO) official on Wednesday.

Once considered a disease on the decline, the social and economic downfall that followed after the collapse of the Soviet Union has sparked an escalation of the TB epidemic in many post-USSR countries, including Ukraine. The country’s prisons are a hotbed for the disease, with prevalence rates more than ten times higher than in the rest of society. In the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Médecins Sans Frontières now provides treatment and support to over 140 inmates and ex-inmates suffering from multi-drug-resistant (MDR) TB.

According to the WHO In 2011, an estimated 8.7 million people fell ill with tuberculosis and 1.4 million people died from it, including 0.5 million women, making TB one of the top three causes of death for women aged 15 to 44 worldwide. “Although the ratio of males to females affected by TB in the pre-puberty and childhood ages is almost equal, this changes significantly in adulthood, and we find almost 4 men per 1 woman affected with TB,” according to Dr. Sarabjit Chadha, Project Director at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (The Union), India. Dr Chadha attributes this to “access related issues considering that women in the rural settings do not have a similar health seeking behavior as men. Also, issues of poverty and malnutrition are more relevant in case of women because of gender inequality.”

ECDC’s new Annual Epidemiological Report provides a comprehensive review of more than 50 communicable diseases currently notifiable under EU legislation.

On December 31, 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its approval of a new drug to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The agency granted bedaquiline (Sirturo) “fast-track” approval, assessing its efficacy by a surrogate measure rather than an actual clinical outcome. The criterion was the capacity of the drug, compared with placebo, to convert a patient's sputum culture from positive to negative for Mycobacterium tuberculosis when added to a standard MDR-TB regimen.