Contribution of front-line, standard of care drugs to bactericidal responses, resistance emergence, and cure in murine models of easy- or hard-to-treat tuberculosis disease
By assessing the standard of care regimen for tuberculosis (TB) in BALB/c and C3HeB/FeJ mice, we demonstrate that rifampin, with or without pyrazinamide, is essential to effective bactericidal response and resistance suppression. Potency measurements in an in vitro lipid-rich model and rabbit caseum assay recapitulate the significance of rifampin as a sterilizing agent. These outcomes align with clinical performance, thus emphasizing the value of in vitro predictive tools and murine TB models with human-like pathology.
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