Formulation Strategies for Antitubercular Drugs by Inhalation

This chapter explores the formulation of inhalation products that could be employed in several critical therapeutic and socio-economical situations with expected greater efficacy in terms of the amount of drug deposited and local drug availability. Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, most commonly affecting the lungs. It is transmitted from one person to another via contaminated droplets nebulized in air when people with the active infection cough or sneeze. Drug-resistant TB is the man-made result of interrupted, erratic, or inadequate TB therapy, and its expansion is undermining efforts to control the global TB epidemic. The therapy of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is carried on with the so-called second-line drugs. Several studies have recently been started in order to introduce inhalation medicines that enable to complement the oral or parenteral administration, eventually aiming to increase the effectiveness against the resistant strains.