Sanjay Jain led a recent Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study in animal models, published in Nature Communications. The study showed that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved antibiotic regimen for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis may not work for TB meningitis, the worst form of TB, which leads to an infection in the brain that causes increased fluid and inflammation.

“Most treatments for TB meningitis are based on studies of treatments for pulmonary TB," says Jain. "so we don’t have good treatment options for TB meningitis.”

Studies in a small number of people also provide evidence that a new combination of drugs is needed to develop effective treatments for TB meningitis due to multidrug-resistant strains.