Word: isoniazids
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...sooner had isoniazid established it self as a wonder drug in the treatment of tuberculosis (TIME, March 3, 1952) than another contender appeared: pyrazinamide, also called Aldinamide. Alone, it proved disappointing. But when the two drugs were given together, researchers at Manhattan's New York Hospital found, the combination had a truly amazing property: it was able to wipe out tuberculous infection in the spleens of mice whereas previous drugs or combinations had only arrested the growth of the bacilli. They thought they were on the brink of a momentous discovery...
...work out at about $1.80 a day for each patient. Local and voluntary moneys boost the total to $4.50, whereas in hard-pressed Mississippi the total is $6.24, and in Tennessee $10. Only three of Alabama's eight sanatoriums are equipped for surgery, and some give streptomycin and isoniazid only to patients who can pay for them. One 65-bed hospital has no registered nurse; a practical nurse does her best with unskilled help...
When it was first tested, the newest TB "wonder" drug, isoniazid (TIME, March 3, 1952), seemed just what the doctor ordered. But cautious physicians withheld their verdict; too many promising drugs had already turned into disappointing failures. As reports on isoniazid piled up, doctors began to suspect trouble. They observed that some strains of tubercle bacilli quickly learned to live with the drug, and they worried lest the new bacilli lead to varieties of TB that might be harder than ever to cure...
...Colorado last week, Dr. Gardner Middlebrook of Denver's National Jewish Hospital confirmed the doctors' suspicions, but calmed their fears. Isoniazid-resistant bacilli did indeed develop, said Dr. Middlebrook, but in tests with lab animals, the new bacilli proved to have lost the old virulence. And they seemed to have lost the ability to grow and reproduce in healthy tissue. Dr. Middlebrook is pretty sure that isoniazid "will not solve all the problems of tuberculosis." But he is ready to call it "the most remarkable chemotherapeutic agent yet discovered for an infectious disease...
...Encouraged by the first year's results with isoniazid (especially when given along with streptomycin or PAS), New York City officials announced an ambitious program to bring every known tuberculosis case under treatment. Outpatient care will help those waiting for hospital beds and will make it possible to send patients home sooner but keep them under treatment; it will also be good for many of the balky ones who refuse hospitalization...