A therapy showing promise to help control tuberculosis (TB) does not interfere with combined antiretroviral therapy (cART), according to research by Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed). "This is an important hurdle that this host-directed therapy had to clear in order to help patients battling both HIV and TB," said Texas Biomed Professor Smriti Mehra, Ph.D.
, who led the study published in the journal JCI Insight . TB is responsible for more than 1.3 million deaths worldwide every year.
Dr. Mehra and her team have been investigating a therapy currently used in cancer as a potential treatment for patients with drug-resistant TB and/or comorbid HIV. While many cases of TB can be controlled with months of antibiotics, the infection can return in people who are immunocompromised as a result of HIV.
Now that cART is so effective at controlling HIV, a resurging TB infection can often be deadly to those individuals. Dr. Mehra is studying a host-directed therapy that blocks or inhibits an immune system protein naturally found in the body.
The protein, called IDO (short for Indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase), normally suppresses the immune system, preventing it from causing excessive inflammation and organ damage. Inhibiting IDO for short intervals of time has led to more successful cancer treatments. Dr.
Mehra's team has previously shown the same approach improves control of TB in conjunction with antibiotics. This current study in nonhuman primates with both TB and simian i.