Recent Advances in Drug Susceptible Pulmonary Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment

The most important thing for the management of drug susceptible pulmonary tuberculosis is to diagnose active pulmonary tuberculosis as soon as possible and prevent the occurrence of new patients through appropriate treatment. Therefore, it should be a priority to quickly detect tuberculosis mycobacterium and quickly exclude drug-resistant tuberculosis before treatment begins. To this end, recent guidelines recommend the general use of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, Xpert MTB/RIF tests, and rapid sensitivity tests through line probe assay (LPA). In addition, if the results of the test are positive, it is important to establish an in-hospital reporting system so that rapid reporting can be made. The treatment principle for drug susceptible pulmonary tuberculosis is 2 months of initial intensive phase (isoniazid, rifampin, ethambutol, pyrazinamide) followed by 4 months of maintenance phase (isoniazid, rifampin). Despite global efforts to shorten the duration of the treatment, the treatment of drug susceptible pulmonary tuberculosis has not changed for more than 35 years, and problems such as increased side effects and reduced drug adherence are serious obstacles to tuberculosis management. Therefore, efforts have been steadily made to shorten the treatment period through the combination of new drugs worldwide, and after many failures, they are finally paying off. A recently published Study 31/A5349 study found that 4 months short-term regimen using rifapentine (RPT) and moxifloxacin (MFX) demonstrated non-inferiority in existing standard regimen, as the result, a revision of World Health Organization guidelines is scheduled that 4 months short-term regimen using RPT and MFX may be an alternative. However, it is unlikely that RPT/MFX 4 months short-term regimen will be applied immediately in Korea because the use of RPT is currently limited in Korea due to the high frequency of side effects.