Clinical Study of New Intensive Treatment Regimen for Severe Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Pulmonary Disease

Currently, the annual prevalence of nontuberculous mycobacterial lung disease is increasing year by year. the clinical presentation of NTM is similar to that of tuberculosis, but most NTM is severely resistant to antibiotics, making it difficult to treat, and it responds poorly to classical antituberculous mycobacterial drugs. the overall response rate for the treatment of NTM lung disease is approximately 50% according to current domestic and international treatment guidelines. In severe NTM lung disease, after more than one anti-mycobacterial treatment, the resistance rate is even higher, the disease is more severe, and treatment is even more difficult. Current clinical treatment regimens are mainly long courses and combinations of drugs, however, the results are often unsatisfactory with an overall cure rate of only 30%. Therefore, we need to continue to explore new effective drugs for NTM lung disease and explore new and more effective drug regimens.

Several drugs have shown promising effects in basic research and clinical applications for NTM. For example, clofazimine has shown good efficacy in the treatment of nontuberculous mycobacterial lung disease. In addition, some new antibiotics or anti-tuberculosis drugs have attracted attention for showing good anti-NTM effects in in vitro experiments, such as tigecycline, linezolid, and bedaquiline. Based on the clinical experience of the investigators and related basic research, we conducted a clinical study of new regimens for intensive treatment of severe non-tuberculous mycobacterial lung disease.