A RCT of Prednisone as Adjunctive Therapy for Hospitalized Patients With Pulmonary TB and HIV Co-infection

Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death in people infected with HIV worldwide. South Africa has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis and HIV in sub Saharan Africa and the world. Infection with HIV can result in activation of the latent form of TB to its active form. In places like sub Saharan Africa where the HIV rates are very high TB has spread with incredible vigor. In order to study this phenomenon, we conducted a preliminary project, which demonstrated that there are approximately 250 patients with active TB admitted to one urban South African hospital in one month and that almost half of them are infected with HIV. One quarter of them died while in hospital. They were young people with an average of 32 years. We are interested in undertaking clinical trials that will study novel therapies that can be added to the existing antimicrobial regimens in order to reduce the number of people dying from TB. One of these therapies would be the addition of prednisone, an oral steroid, to the standard TB treatment regimen. Steroids have been shown to be useful in TB meningitis and pericarditis in HIV positive and negative patients. However, steroids have never been tested in a formal manner in HIV patients with pulmonary TB. We have chosen to do our research in South Africa since the numbers of patients needed to design a clinical trial such as the one presented can only be found in such an environment. Prednisone is cheap, easily obtainable and thus a sustainable intervention in developing countries. The impact of the research would affect not only the international community including Canada but would certainly have a lasting sustainable effect on the local community in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in addition to the rest of the world.