Towards individualised treatment of tuberculosis

Each year, around 10 million of individuals develop active tuberculosis (TB). Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death from an infectious agent surpassing both malaria and HIV. Current treatment regimens are long and therefore encompass a risk of nonadherence and development of acquired drug-resistance, reflected in the increase of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB. Indeed, this calls for prudent use of existing TB drugs and improvement of TB treatment strategies. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the current drug susceptibility testing (DST) breakpoints for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) of TB treatment and to explore the role of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for optimising TB treatment.