Vitamin C kills drug-resistant TB bacteria

In an “unexpected” discovery,vitamin C has been found to kill drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, which could mean existing drugs can be redesigned to combat the disease.

In an “unexpected” discovery,vitamin C has been found to kill drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, which could mean existing drugs can be redesigned to combat the disease.

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Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, New York, have determined vitamin C kills drug-resistant TB bacteria in lab culture.

The finding suggests vitamin C added to existing TB drugs could shorten TB therapy, and it highlights a new area for drug design.

TB is caused by infection with the bacterium M tuberculosis. According to the WHO, TB sickened 8.7 million people and took 1.4 million lives in 2011, Infections that fail to respond to TB drugs are a growing problem: About 650,000 people worldwide now have multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), 9% of whom have extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).

The discovery arose during research into how TB bacteria become resistant to isoniazid, a potent first-line TB drug. William Jacobs, lead investigator and senior author of the study and his colleagues observed that soniazid-resistant TB bacteria were deficient in a molecule called mycothiol.