The new TB medicines, 90 percent of drug-resistant tuberculosis therapy.

A new combination of anti-drug drugs has treated 90 percent of drug-resistant tuberculosis patients, according to a study. 

A team of researchers, supported by the TB Alliance, published in the journal The New England Journal of Medicine on the 4th the results of a new anti-tuberculosis drug combination consisting of Bedaquillin, Pretomanide and Linezolid that treated 90 percent of fatal drug-resistant tuberculosis patients.

It's a very important result and probably one of the biggest advances in tuberculosis treatment since the 1970s, said Dr. Chayson of the Center for Tuberculosis Research at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the study.

Tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people every year and causes 10 million new tuberculosis each year, about 500,000 of which are drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis bacteria partially grow resistance to traditional therapies when the standard drug combination is not effective in treatment.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis has a cure success rate of less than 50 percent, an average of only 14 percent in South Africa, and currently requires seven drugs to be administered for at least 18 months and many side effects to endure.

Over the past two decades, multidrug-resistant and broad-based tuberculosis treatments have been highly toxic and ineffective, with hearing loss occurring in half of patients and nausea and vomiting side effects in all patients.

However, the new drugs are all oral and have a six-month dose period and some patients have shown improvement within one to two weeks.

Clinical tests were conducted on 109 volunteers in three South African regions, with 51 percent of those surveyed HIV positive and 84 percent having holes in the lungs in chest X-rays.

Clinical trials showed that only 10% failed to treat or recurred within six months of the end of treatment, and 81% of the most important side effects of linesolid association experienced mild to moderate nervous numbness.

The team said these side effects are manageable by drug dosage control, and Dr. Melvin Spiegelman, president of the World Federation for Tuberculosis Drug Development, said, "It may be naive to believe that drug resistance can be completely eliminated, but clearly better than what we have done historically."