An off-patent anti-inflammatory drug that costs around two cents for a daily dose in developing countries has been found by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College to kill both replicating and non-replicating drug resistant tuberculosis in the laboratory -- a feat few currently approved TB drugs can do, and resistance to those is spreading. Their findings, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to a potential new therapy for the more than 500,000 people worldwide whose TB has become resistant to standard drug treatments. But the researchers worry that the effective drug, oxyphenbutazone, may never be tested in TB clinical trials.
