Clinical Efficacy and Safety of Clofazimine in Treatment Regimens for Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (Meta-Analysis)

The objective: based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of data from published results of clinical studies, to evaluate clinical efficacy and safety of chemotherapy regimens containing clofazimine in MDR-TB patients. Subjects and Methods. A systematic analysis of publications was performed using key words “clofazimine”, “tuberculosis treatment”, “mycobacteria drug resistance”, and “safety” in electronic libraries: PubMed, Google Scholar, eLIBRARY.RU, and medRvix. 7 clinical studies were selected for further analysis. Results. The risk of treatment failure in main groups receiving regimens containing clofazimine was 1.7 times lower versus control groups (without clofazimine) ( p = 0.02; RR = 0.6 (95% CI: 0.39 – 0.92)). The risk of sputum conversion by week 12 of treatment is 7 times higher in main groups receiving regimens containing clofazimine versus control groups ( p = 0.01; RR = 0.14 (95% CI: 0.03 – 0.25)). The risk of adverse events in main groups receiving regimens containing clofazimine was comparable to control groups ( p = 0.54; RR = 1.27 (95% CI: 0.59 – 2.71)).