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M. bovis is inherently resistant to one of the key drugs used to treat human TB - pyrazinamide.

For an ordinary infection, the WHO-mandated treatment includes lengthy treatment with a cocktail of antibiotics: a two-month course of rifampicin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide and ethambutol followed by a four-month regimen of isoniazid and rifampicin alone.

Early results from the TB Alliance trial on bedaquiline, clofazimine, PA-824 and pyrazinamide also look encouraging.

The new combination therapy consists of PA-824, a novel drug in the TB pipeline; moxifloxacin, an antibiotic for treating pneumonia and sinus infections; and pyrazinamide, a TB drug developed in 1952.

Scientists in South Africa divided 85 newly diagnosed TB patients to take a variety of combinations of standard or experimental TB drugs, Fifteen of the patients received a unique trio that emerged as the study's focus: An experimental antibiotic code-named PA-824, along with the pneumonia drug moxifloxacin and an older TB drug, pyrazinamide.