Nanomedicine for tuberculosis: Insights from animal models

Abstract

Patient noncompliance to current tuberculosis (TB) therapy owing to multidrug administration daily leads to treatment failure and emergence of multidrug resistant and extensively drug resistant TB. To avoid the daily dosing, application of nanotechnology is the only viable solution by virtue of sustained release of drugs. Other potential advantages of the system include the possibility of selecting various routes of dosing, reduction in drug dosage/adverse effects/drug interactions, targeting drug resistant and latent bacteria etc. Plenty of work has been done in animal models of TB to support the notion that nanomedicine provides a ray of hope to encounter TB effectively; certain crucial questions are yet to be addressed.