Fumagalli Giovanni, Riccardi Niccolò, Catalano Gaia, Ferrarese Maurizio, Repossi Alice Claudia, Codecasa Luigi R
Regional TB Reference Centre, Villa Marelli Institute, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy.
StopTB Italia ODV, Milan, Italy.
Microb Drug Resist. 2025 Jan;31(1):12-15. doi: 10.1089/mdr.2024.0045. Epub 2024 Dec 12.
Even if in the past years new effective, safe, and orally administrable drugs are available to create shorter regimens, drug-resistant (DR) tuberculosis (TB) treatment remains a critical issue and a major challenge faced by clinicians worldwide. We present the first case of transborder pulmonary pre-extensively drug-resistant (pre-XDR)-TB treated in Italy with the bedaquiline-pretomanid-linezolid regimen. Diagnosis and treatment were started in Ukraine, and, after a month of treatment, due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the patient moved to Italy, where the diagnosis was confirmed both by genotypic and phenotypic drug susceptibility tests, and treatment continued. In this short report, we highlight challenges and future opportunities to improve the clinical management of patient with DR-TB.