High-Dose rifampicin: Time to dose it right!

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major cause of mortality worldwide. Effective control of TB is being hampered by the prolonged duration of therapy which leads to poor patient compliance. This can lead to increased relapse rates and emergence of drug-resistant organisms, thus further compounding the problem. An exciting new avenue to reduce the duration of therapy is the use of high-dose rifampicin. High-dose rifampicin is being extensively studied and the data is exciting. It has shown to result in better sterilization and earlier culture conversion with no increase in adverse reactions. These effects of high-dose rifampicin can possibly help reduce the duration of TB treatment. Whether this “high-dose-reduced-duration-rifampicin-regimen” will lead to increased relapse rates is yet to be studied. If not, then this gives physicians a well proven and inexpensive option to cure TB and hence may be the future of TB treatment.