Treatment of Tuberculosis in Nano Era: Recent Avenues

Tuberculosis (TB) is a life-threatening infectious disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), which mostly affects the lungs. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report 2020, there were over 10 million cases of tuberculosis worldwide, with around 1.4 million people dying, wherein India accounts for over 26% of the global burden. Prolonged treatment, high pill burden, low compliance, development of multiple drug resistance and subsequent intolerable toxicity lead to the emergence of new nanotechnology-based drug delivery approaches involving micro-metric and nano-metric carriers. Nanotechnology is superior to conventional therapies as it offers site specific drug delivery of antimicrobial drugs that increases therapeutic efficacy and reduces systemic toxicity associated with higher doses and also prevents the drug from early degradation, increased solubility and blood retention time. This review focuses on the different nanotechnological carriers via pulmonary route, including liposomes, niosomes, solid lipid nanocarriers, dendrimers, nanoparticles, microspheres and microparticles for tackling the problems related to the treatment of TB. The current review gives a summary of the possible utilization of nanotechnologybased carrier systems to overcome the disadvantages of TB therapy. It also provides a summary of the importance and advancements of directing nanocarriers at bacterial reservoir. Eventually, the article presents an overview of the success in clinical application of such systems.