From bad tasting big, broken and/or crushed pills to small, fruit flavoured and water dispersible pills is a big step ahead indeed!
But then there is need of new approaches to accelerate new paediatric TB drug development too. As of now, there is a generally a gap of 7 years or more between development and availability of new adult products and their paediatric formulations.
Dr Scott feels that, "This is more so because the drug industry finds it more profitable to concentrate on developing adult products generally, and so lags behind in making child friendly formulations. Accelerated drug development pathway should integrate adult and pediatric development process. We need to do studies and soon enough, to understand how the new drugs will work in children. This is what we are doing at TB Alliance. As soon as safety profiles will allow, we will start developing new formulations. Traditionally companies have staggered testing in different age groups--from the oldest to the youngest. But this is quite flawed as we can test for different children's age groups simultaneously, thus cutting the time involved in testing for paediatric drugs. We should not lag behind anymore. Then again, the question of having 2nd line drugs still remains. We hope that some of the 2nd line drugs, like injectibles, will be replaced very soon with friendlier options".
Dr Cherise Scott mentions the main challenges that still remain to tackle paediatric TB - lack of funding and resources; contact investigation and case notification of children to bring them into the system as there should be no reason for any child with TB to be not treated and get cured; and paving the way for new products and new innovations, not as an afterthought, but keeping children in minds right from the beginning.
Shobha Shukla, Citizen News Service - CNS
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