Treatment outcomes of bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis: a retrospective and matched cohort study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rising prevalence of bedaquiline resistance undermines benefits from this life-saving drug for rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (RR tuberculosis). Despite increasing awareness, patient-level outcomes for bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis have not been well characterised and case management has been poorly defined. METHODS: We did a retrospective cohort study of bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis with matched RR tuberculosis controls at a tuberculosis referral hospital in East London, South Africa. Cases included patients aged 13 years or older with a phenotypic bedaquiline-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolate identified between Jan 1, 2018 and June 30, 2023. Controls with confirmed bedaquiline-susceptible tuberculosis, matched 1:1 by baseline culture status, age, and HIV status, were selected from a prospective observational study conducted during an overlapping period at the same facility. Primary outcomes included time to sputum culture conversion (SCC), a modified WHO-defined unfavourable outcome, and tuberculosis-free survival (alive, with SCC, and in care or treatment completed) up until 18 months. Adjusted analyses used Cox proportional hazards and logistic regression models. FINDINGS: 82 patients with bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis were included, 57 (70%) of whom were HIV positive. Bedaquiline was prescribed for 72 (88%) of 82 patients and meropenem (plus amoxicillin-clavulanate) for 32 (39%) of 82. Together with bedaquiline, the most frequently prescribed drugs included clofazimine, linezolid, and terizidone. Median time to SCC after treatment initiation was 175 days (IQR 100-254) in the bedaquiline-resistant cohort and 32 days (30-42) in matched controls. In the analysis of the combined cohorts, bedaquiline resistance (adjusted hazard ratio 0·03, 95% CI 0·0023-0·29, p=0·003) was associated with longer time to SCC when adjusted for baseline microscopy grade and baseline fluoroquinolone resistance. WHO treatment outcomes in those with bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis were unfavourable in 54 (67%) of 81 patients, driven by treatment failure in 35 (43%) of 81. At 18 months, 43 (52%) of 82 patients had reached tuberculosis-free survival, 19 (23%) of 82 had died, and 50 (79%) of 63 survivors were still on treatment. INTERPRETATION: Current treatment options for bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis result in prolonged therapy, delayed microbiological responses, and poor clinical outcomes. Implementation of more rapid resistance testing, including targeted next-generation sequencing, and access to novel treatment options within randomised controlled trials for bedaquiline-resistant tuberculosis, are priorities for tuberculosis programmes. FUNDING: The South African Medical Research Council.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".