“European drug regulators gave their backing on Friday to two new medicines for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease that affects some 450,000 people worldwide each year and for which there are few effective treatments,” Reuters reports. “The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said its support for marketing authorizations for Otsuka’s TB drug Deltyba and for Para-aminosalicylic acid Lucane … were part of efforts to tackle the growing public health challenge of antibiotic resistance,” the news agency writes (11/22). “‘Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is associated with a very high mortality rate and poses a significant public health threat as individuals infected with drug-resistant strains are unable to receive adequate treatment and can potentially spread their infection,’ EMA said in a statement on its website,” Bloomberg states (Gerlin, 11/22). The Wall Street Journal notes TB “infected an estimated 8.6 million people in 2012, killing 1.3 million of them” (McKay, 11/22).