Update on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis treatment

Despite technological advances in the world, antimicrobial resistance against Mycobacterium tuberculosis represents a great threat to public health. Worldwide, 20% of tuberculosis cases are multidrug-resistant, and the number of patients continues to increase day after day. The successful treatment of tuberculosis has become a great challenge for global health according to the World Health Organization. This review aims to give a general overview of tuberculosis, including its history, generalities, epidemiology, and treatment, and to give a broader review of new treatment proposals, reviewing their sensitivity, specificity, and reduced numbers of side effects. PubMed, Google Scholar, Elsevier, and EBSCOhost were used to obtain the main articles describing the research conducted on new drugs to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. The clinical trials for the new drugs used to treat extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis demonstrated good therapeutic regimens and compared the new drugs to identify which of them had more efficacy and less toxicity. The new drugs developed to treat extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis that were effective in 85%-90% of patients were bedaquiline, pretomanid, and linezolid.