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Oldie but goodie: Repurposing penicillin for tuberculosis

Nature Medicine volume 20, pages 976–978 (2014)Cite this article

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“We had no more hope for this young girl,” says Marie-Christine Payen, an infectious disease specialist at Saint-Pierre. As her patient struggled to survive, Payen read about an unconventional approach that could save the girl's life and open the door to saving many more.

Payen read about an antibiotic called meropenem that was a potent killer of drug-resistant bacteria in lab experiments but only when it was used in combination another compound called clavulanate1. Both drugs were already approved by the European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other indications, so after reading the study, Payen adjusted the girl's drug regimen and added the meropenem-clavulanate combination. After eight months on the new regimen, the patient was discharged from the hospital with no traces of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in her sputum. Other patients in Payen's clinic who watched the girl's progress wanted the same treatment, and she conceded despite the fact that meropenem is a beta-lactam and beta-lactams are not supposed to work for tuberculosis.

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  1. Amanda B. Keener is a former news intern at Nature Medicine in New York and currently a freelance writer in Greensboro, North Carolina.,

    Amanda B. Keener

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Keener, A. Oldie but goodie: Repurposing penicillin for tuberculosis. Nat Med 20, 976–978 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0914-976

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