Are suboptimal doses of the TB drugs being given to children?
In fact, several recent publications indicate that children (whether HIV-infected or not) receiving the major TB drugs are exposed to lower serum concentrations of these drugs than adults receiving comparable doses.11, 12, 13 According to presentations at both the South African TB Conference and later at the 2008 Union World Conference on Lung Health, sixty years since antibiotic treatment for TB was introduced, researchers are only now figuring out how to properly dose the first-line drugs in children (and the situation is even worse when it comes to second line medications for children with drug resistant TB, see below). “When our current TB drugs were developed, there was little appreciation of the need for higher dosages of drugs in children to achieve concentrations comparable to those of adults,” said Professor Peter Donald of Stellenbosch University, who presented the findings of an exhaustive literature review as well as new data looking at the pharmacokinetics of some of the T
