Drug Resistance in Tuberculosis: How to Counter The Menace?

Tuberculosis is one of the leading global health issues responsible for a significant mortality. The emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR), extensively drug resistant (XDR) and total drug resistant (TDR) strains have further hampered the disease control. Drug resistance has emerged as imperative concern resulting in genetic selection of drug resistance strains making them unresponsive to most of the drugs. In addition iron has been implicated in promoting Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) replication, infection and progression to clinical disease. ideR is an essential gene in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and controls the transcription of mycobacterium by binding to promoters of ideR regulated gene in presence of iron. Iron chelators have the potential to sequester this excess iron hence hampering MTB replication and restoring host defence mechanisms. Iron chelators could be envisaged as promising candidates in iron overload associated prevention and treatment of MTB.