Tuberculosis: Current Treatment Options and Future Scope

Tuberculosis (TB) is a communicable disease that mainly affects the lungs. TB is the major cause of ill health and the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. The emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has led to the failure of first-line antituberculosis therapy. An appropriate combination of anti-TB drugs or substitution with second-line agents are required for improving the treatment success rates of MDR and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB. Only a few drugs such as bedaquiline, delamanid, and pretomanid have been approved for treating MDR-TB since the last four decades. There is a dire need for the development of more effective TB drugs, adjunct therapies, and vaccines in order to improve the treatment outcomes. In this chapter, we made efforts to provide an overview of the current treatment options and challenges of TB therapy. In addition, we discussed the latest treatment strategies, new chemical entities, herbal drugs, new drug regimens, and vaccines being developed to treat both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB disease.