Drug-resistant tuberculosis in 2017: at a crossroads

In The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Dheda and colleagues present one of the most comprehensive pictures to date of the global epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis. This comes at a time of increasing awareness of antimicrobial resistance as a global threat, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis has had a 50-year head start in developing resistance to current first-line therapy. In reading about compensatory mutations, increasing prevalence of incurable tuberculosis, and widespread transmission of drug-resistant tuberculosis, it is easy to become disheartened.