Managing Drug Interactions in the Treatment of HIV-Related Tuberculosis, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 2013

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.1 million of the 8.7 million people who developed incident tuberculosis (TB) in 2011 (13%) were also infected with HIV, making TB the most common serious opportunistic infection among people with HIV worldwide. This report by the Centers for Disease Control discusses the complexity of simultaneously treating TB and HIV, and sets forth recommendations for clinicians for managing the drug-drug interactions that occur when treating HIV infection with antiretroviral therapy during tuberculosis treatment. The report, developed by the CDC’s HIV-TB Drug Interaction Guideline Development Group, reviewed the findings of clinical trials, abstracts from conferences and workshops, and drug interaction data from drug package inserts. Yet, the authors note the limitations of the information available for writing the guidelines, and that the recommendations are based primarily on expert opinion. The authors describe their findings on numerous HIV-TB drug combinations, and include separate sections addressing interactions for co-infected pregnant women and children.