JAC Advance Access originally published online on July 12, 2006
Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 2006 58(3):494-495; doi:10.1093/jac/dkl260
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Leading articles |
Clinical development of anti-tuberculosis drugs
St George's, University of London, Division of Cellular & Molecular Medicine Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE, UK
*Corresponding author. Tel: +44-208-8725-5704; Fax +44-208-8672-0234; E-mail: dmitchis{at}sgul.ac.uk
In the clinical development of new anti-tuberculosis drugs, the most important step is efficient Phase II studies to show whether the drug is likely to be able to shorten treatment and with what other drugs it has the greatest sterilizing activity. The use of non-linear mixed effects modelling applied to serial sputum cfu counts appears to be the most effective technique, but we know little about the optimal design of such novel studies. A paper in the current journal reports on the relative efficiencies of various timing patterns in sampling sputum.
Keywords: TB , drug development , treatment