[SMART4TB] BREACH-TB Trial Launches in Tanzania to Test One-Month, Universal TB Preventive Therapy

11 May 2026

SMART4TB announcement

TB is the world’s leading infectious disease killer; in 2024, 10.7 million people fell ill with TB and 1.23 million died. Prevention is crucial, and while promising vaccine candidates are in the pipeline, preventive therapy is the best course for people at risk of moving from infection to active disease. Current TB preventive therapy (TPT) regimens require taking antibiotics for one to six or more months, but not all are eligible for the existing one-month treatment option. For people with TB infection, it is challenging to sustain a long therapy course, especially because those without active disease do not have symptoms. It also challenges families and treatment programs to have to give different regimens depending on people’s health conditions — for example, pregnancy, HIV or exposure to drug-susceptible or drug-resistant TB. SMART4TB’s Bedaquiline Roll-out Evidence in Contacts and People Living with HIV to Prevent TB (BREACH-TB) trial is attempting to tackle some of these challenges with a simplified universal TPT of one month of bedaquiline.

Read the full announcement here.

Source: SMART4TB