A Unitaid-funded study has found that 3HP, a new, shorter preventive therapy for tuberculosis, is safe for people who also take the HIV drug dolutegravir. The results mark a critical milestone for countries and funding partners seeking to expand preventive TB therapy.
“These are the results we have all been waiting for,” Unitaid Executive Director Lelio Marmora said. “The evidence that 3HP is safe to use with dolutegravir, today’s most advanced HIV treatment, is critical for the scale-up of short-course preventive therapy for TB. We now need to focus on affordable pricing for access.”
TB kills some 340,000 people living with HIV every year and accounts for about a third of HIV-related deaths. TB preventive therapy protects people already infected with TB bacteria from falling ill with the active disease and shields those at risk of exposure. A third of the world’s population is infected with latent TB, and HIV infection makes them much more likely to develop active TB.
The new therapy, a rifapentine-based regimen known as 3HP, requires only once-weekly treatment for 12 weeks, compared to the 6-to-36 month daily regimen required under the older standard of care, isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT). Patients are more likely to complete shorter treatments.
Unitaid is investing US$ 59 million in the Aurum-led IMPAACT4TB (2017-2021) project, which seeks to establish rifapentine-based preventative regimens as affordable, quality-assured, less-toxic therapies suitable for wide introduction in countries most affected by TB.
The findings were presented in Seattle at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI).
The project is being implemented in the following countries: Brazil, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, India, Cambodia and Indonesia.
Original source: Unitaid
Published on 06 March 2019
