Activity of Moxifloxacin against <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> in Acid Phase and Nonreplicative-Persister Phenotype Phase in a Hollow-Fiber Infection Model

A major goal for improving tuberculosis therapy is to identify drug regimens with improved efficacy and shorter treatment durations. Shorter therapies improve patient adherence to the antibiotic regimens, which, in turn, decreases resistance emergence. Mycobacterium tuberculosis exists in multiple metabolic states. At the initiation of therapy, the bulk of the population is in log-phase growth. Consequently, it is logical to focus initial therapy on those organisms. Moxifloxacin has good early bactericidal activity against log-phase bacteria and is a logical component of initial therapy. It would be optimal if this agent also possessed activity against acid-phase and nonreplicative-persister (NRP) phenotype organisms. In our hollow-fiber infection model, we studied multiple exposures to moxifloxacin (equivalent to 200 mg to 800 mg daily) against strain H37Rv in the acid phase and against strain 18b in streptomycin starvation, which is a model for NRP-phase organisms. Moxifloxacin possesses good activity against acid-phase organisms, generating cell killing of 3.75 log 10 (CFU/ml) (200 mg daily) to 5.16 log 10 (CFU/ml) (800 mg daily) over the 28 days of the experiment. Moxifloxacin also has activity against streptomycin-starved strain 18b. The 400- to 800-mg daily regimens achieved extinction at day 28, while the no-treatment control still had 1.96 log 10 (CFU/ml) culturable. The lowest dose (200 mg daily) still had 0.7 log 10 (CFU/ml) measurable at day 28, a net kill of 1.26 log 10 (CFU/ml). Moxifloxacin is an attractive agent for early therapy, because it possesses activity against three metabolic states of M. tuberculosis .