Medicine: Progress Against T.B.

Streptomycin quickly proved its value against many forms of tuberculosis, but one of the deadliest held out against the wonder drug: tuberculous meningitis. A particular enemy of children (its bacilli attack the covering of the brain and spinal column), tuberculous meningitis used to mean swift and almost certain death; the few survivors were hopelessly crippled. Now, the U.S. Public Health Service reports, the death rate has been cut almost in half, and the damage to survivors greatly reduced.

The best treatment, doctors now believe, calls for injections of streptomycin into the spinal fluid as well as the muscles. Because some tubercle bacilli develop resistance to the antibiotic, the patients are also given para-aminosalicylic acid (TIME, Jan. 2, 1950).

Of 93 recent cases studied long enough for the doctors to feel confident of the results, 42 are still alive more than a year later, and most seem to have fully recovered, free from paralysis.

Simultaneously, the researchers used streptomycin and PAS against miliary tuberculosis, an equally deadly form of the disease (in which the bacilli are spread throughout the system) which also singles out children. In these cases the results were even more encouraging.