S.H. Constantopoulos, MD, Pulmonary Section, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Ioannina Medical School, GR-451 10 Ioannina (Greece) Dear Sir, The number of new cases of tuberculosis notified to the health authorities is commonly used as an epidemiological index [1, 2]. Notification of new cases of tuberculosis is compulsory in many countries; still many new cases are not reported [...

The efficacy of isoniazid in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis stimulated the search for related drugs that might increase the effectiveness of antituberculosis therapy especially in those chronically ill patients in whom INH does not produce the desired effect or who are unable to tolerate it. Such a compound is cyanacethydrazide** which as its formula indicates is structurally related t...

Nonlinear mixed-effects analysis of serial sputum colony-counting data supports the existence of two bacillary subpopulations in sputum, eliminated at different rates. It distinguishes between combination regimens, removes bias, and greatly improves precision, with significant implications for the analysis of surrogate endpoints of "sterilization" in the development of new antituberculosis regi...

Mycobacteriosis is on the increase. Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are resistant to most antituberculosis drugs naturally. We determined the complete genome sequence of a novel NTM strain, JDM601, of the Mycobacterium terrae complex, which was isolated from a patient with tuberculosis-like disease and with various antibiotic resistances.

Tuberculosis (TB) of the maxillary sinus is rare. We describe the clinical presentation, management and outcome in two human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seronegative patients with histopathologically confirmed maxillary sinus TB. One of the patients who presented earlier in the course of the disease could be managed with antituberculosis treatment alone, while the other who presented late requ...

Central or peripheral demyelinating disorders including neuromyelitis optica, isolated optic neuritis or myelitis, and Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) in patients with tuberculosis have been well documented in the literature. , 2 It has been suggested that they are most likely due to an immune reaction to tuberculosis rather than due to direct invasion of tuberculosis or the adverse effect of ant...

Salicylate has previously been shown to reduce the susceptibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to several drugs in vitro. In this study, aspirin, a salicylate anti-inflammatory, antagonized isoniazid treatment of murine pulmonary tuberculosis, whereas the nonsalicylate ibuprofen did not. These results may have implications on concurrent administration of anti-inflammatory and antituberculosis ...

With the advent of multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains, new and effective therapies are rapidly needed to combat infections caused by these strains. Some new 2-quinoxalinecarbonitrile 1,4-di-N-oxides have been synthesized and tested as antituberculosis agents and interesting results have been obtained from the first screening.

The in vitro activities of cloxyquin (5-chloroquinolin-8-ol) against 9 standard strains and 150 clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis were studied. The MICs ranged from 0.062 to 0.25 microg/ml. The MIC(50) and MIC(90) were 0.125 and 0.25 microg/ml, respectively. These indicate that cloxyquin exhibited good antituberculosis activity, even for multidrug-resistant isolates.

We report a 4 year old girl with ring enhancing lesions in brain CT, initially diagnosed as neurocysticercosis but did not respond to cysticidal therapy. A Magnetic resonance spectropscopy (MRS) revealed lipid peaks suggestive of tuberculoma which was successfully treated with antituberculosis therapy. This report highlights the role of MRS in the diagnosis of ring enhancing lesios.