Although pyrazinamide is commonly used for tuberculosis treatment, drug-susceptibility testing is not routinely available. We found polymorphisms in the pncA gene for 70% of multidrug-resistant and 96% of extensively drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from South Africa and Georgia. Assessment of pyrazinamide susceptibility may be prudent before using it in regimens for drug-resi...

A new set of mutations, including transposition of the insertion sequence IS6110, was identified in the pncA gene from 19 pyrazinamide-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. Alignment of the PncA protein from M. tuberculosis with homologous proteins from different bacterial species revealed three highly conserved regions in PncA which may play an important role in the processing of pyraz...

ing to 1999 estimates, 1.86 billion people — one third of the world’s population — are infected with tuberculosis. Most people with primary tuberculosis (TB) do not have signs or symptoms and may not know that they are infected. Their immune systems contain the tubercle bacilli in oxygen-deprived small granulomas, where the bacilli lie dormant for years. Following primary infection, the lifetim...

5-Chloropyrazinamide and 5-chloropyrazinoic acid were evaluated for in vitro activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium bovis, and several nontuberculous mycobacteria by a broth dilution method. 5-Chloropyrazinamide was more active than pyrazinamide against all organisms tested. It is likely that this agent has a different mechanism of action than pyrazinamide.

BACKGROUND Pyrazinamide and fluoroquinolones are essential antituberculosis drugs in new rifampicin-sparing regimens. However, little information about the extent of resistance to these drugs at the population level is available. METHODS In a molecular epidemiology analysis, we used population-based surveys from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Pakistan, and South Africa to investigate resist...

OBJECTIVES Concomitant food intake influences pharmacokinetics of first-line anti-TB drugs in healthy volunteers. However, in treatment-naive TB patients who are starting with drug treatment, data on the influence of food intake on the pharmacokinetics are absent. This study aimed to quantify the influence of food on the pharmacokinetics of isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol and pyrazinamide in ...

We sequenced pncA and rpsA genes plus flanking regions of 161 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates and found 10 new pncA and 3 novel rpsA mutations in pyrazinamide-resistant strains determined by the Bactec MGIT 960 system. The 3' end of rpsA might be added as the target of molecular detection of pyrazinamide susceptibility.

A total of 76 clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from Taiwan were tested for pyrazinamidase activity, pyrazinamide susceptibility, and pncA mutations. Frequency of resistance to PZA rose with increases in resistance to first-line drugs. Of 17 pyrazinamide-resistant strains, 7 (3 of which had not been previously described) possessed mutations in the pncA gene.