Antituberculosis agents

Antituberculosis agents are drugs used to treat tuberculosis, an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This infection mainly affects the lungs but can also affect many other organ systems. Many classes of drugs, with different mechanism of action have activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis chemotherapy involves giving two to four drugs simultaneously. These drugs work differently so they target the organism in different ways and using a few types of drugs prevents drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium from evolving.