Amy Yurkanin | ayurkanin@al.com
“He was incredibly invested in making sure that patients got through their tuberculosis therapy and were able to get well and get their health back on track,” Willeford said.that could greatly improve treatment for some of the most challenging tuberculosis patients around the world. Dr. Karen Landers, chief medical officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health and an expert on tuberculosis, is also a co-author on the study and worked closely with Khan for years.
Landers said Khan was instrumental in identifying patients who might benefit from the treatment and getting them involved in the study. The two doctors coordinated to care for these cases and gather data that can help guide health departments in the future. “BPAL is a breakthrough in not the treatment of ordinary tuberculosis, but against some of the most difficult types of tuberculosis to treat: multidrug resistant forms,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security. “So, in the past, those treatments often required maybe five drugs with poor efficacy. Sometimes coupled with surgery to remove parts of the lung that were affected that couldn’t be cured with antibiotics.
The results are good news for patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 500,000 people are infected worldwide with drug-resistant tuberculosis every year and 200,000 die from the disease. “This is also a savings when you get right down to it in terms of the amount of time that public health has to devote to an individual disease,” Landers said.