Research of the common tuberculosis (TB) drug pyrazinamide, which is used in combination with other medications to treat the disease in a six-month regimen, “has now revealed that the drug does kill the latent form of the microbe, which does not cause observable symptoms,” VOA News reports.

“With their improved understanding of how pyrazinamide actually works at the molecular level,” Clifton Barry, who directs tuberculosis research at the National Institutes of Health, “said scientists will be able to design a more potent form of the drug that could shorten the duration of TB treatment from six months to just two,” the news agency writes. “Experts are applauding the new insights into this important TB drug, and the prospects for improved therapies. But they say the best way to slow the global tuberculosis epidemic is to match these treatment gains with similar strides toward faster, more reliable TB testing,” according to VOA News (Sinha, 8/19).