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Study: Treatments to prevent tuberculosis offer long-lasting protection

Research is first to compare how long these treatments are effective across settings with different infection rates

  • 2 min. read ▪ Published

Preventive tuberculosis (TB) treatments are given to millions of people at high risk of developing the airborne bacterial disease, but researchers have had limited data about how long protection offered by the treatments may last.

A new meta-analysis published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine was able to assess how long these treatments are effective. The study cross referenced data from more than 84,000 people across 44 studies in 24 countries from 1998–2023, and found that in areas where TB is rare or moderately common, taking preventative TB medicine gives strong, long-lasting protection that can last up to 13 years. Even if people in these areas don’t finish the full course of medicine, they still end up with a similar low risk of getting sick in the long run.

However, in places where tuberculosis is extremely common, that initial protection wears off more quickly—likely because people are exposed to the bacteria repeatedly. Still, preventative treatment was associated with a lower risk of developing TB for at least eight years in these areas.

This is the first study to directly compare how long tuberculosis preventive treatment remains effective across settings with very different levels of TB infection rates .

“We hope these findings will help countries more effectively target and design tuberculosis prevention programs,” said senior author and UC Berkeley professor Leonardo Martinez. “The long-lasting protection we observed strengthens the case for identifying people at high risk of TB and ensuring that they are offered preventive treatment. And in high-burden settings, our findings suggest that preventive treatment remains important but may not be sufficient on its own because people continue to be exposed and reinfected; pairing preventive treatment with interventions that reduce TB transmission, such as earlier case finding and infection prevention, may be necessary to achieve lasting impact.”

The findings are particularly timely because expanding tuberculosis preventive treatment is a major component of the World Health Organization’s End TB Strategy, and global leaders have set a target of providing preventive treatment to 45 million people at high risk of TB by 2027.

Read the full paper here

Co-authors include lead author Lauren Linde of Boston University; Timothy F. Brewer of UCLA; Edward C. Jones-López of UC Irvine; and multiple other authors. A full list is available on the published paper.

Individual researcher funding is also available on the published paper.

People of UCBPH found in this article include:

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