Effectiveness and Safety of Short-Course Chemotherapy Regimens for Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

The objective: to evaluate clinical effectiveness and safety of short-course chemotherapy regimens in patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis based on a systematic and meta-analytic study. Subjects and Methods. A systematic search for scientific publications published between 01.01.2018 and 01.10.2023 was conducted in PubMed and eLibrary. Sixty-six studies were selected using the keywords “treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis, randomized clinical trials”. By a manual review, 7 publications meeting required parameters for meta-analysis were identified. Results. A single-group meta-analysis of the effectiveness of short-term chemotherapy regimens demonstrated the following: a favorable outcome can be achieved in 80.9% of cases; an unfavorable outcome occurs in 19.4%; sputum culture conversion by 8 weeks of chemotherapy is achieved in 74.6% of cases; SAEs were registered in 15.1% of patients, grade 3 and higher SAEs- in 39.5% (based on 4 publications).