Tedizolid is highly bactericidal in the treatment of pulmonary Mycobacterium avium complex disease

Objectives

To determine if tedizolid is effective for pulmonary Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) disease, and to use pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics to design optimal doses.

Methods

We performed an exposure–response experiment in the hollow-fibre system model of intracellular MAC (HFS-MAC). We mimicked the tedizolid concentration–time profiles achieved in the lungs of patients treated once daily for 28 days. The HFS-MAC was sampled at intervals to determine the tedizolid pharmacokinetics and MAC intracellular burden. We identified the 0–24 h area under the concentration–time curves to MIC (AUC0–24/MIC) ratios associated with the following targets: 80% of maximal kill (EC80), bacteriostasis, and 1.0 and 2.0 log10 cfu/mL kill. We then performed 10 000 patient Monte Carlo simulations to identify the optimal dose for each of the exposure targets.

Results

Tedizolid achieved the feat of 2.0 log10 cfu/mL kill below initial bacterial burden, an effect not seen before in this model with other antibiotics. The tedizolid exposure associated with 1.0 log10 cfu/mL kill was a non-protein bound AUC0–24/MIC ratio of 23.46, while that associated with 2.0 log10 cfu/mL kill was 37.50, and the EC80 was 21.71. The clinical dose of 200 mg achieved each of these targets in ∼100% of the 10 000 patients, except the 2.0 log10 cfu/mL kill which required 300 mg/day. A tedizolid susceptibility MIC breakpoint of 1 mg/L is proposed.

Conclusions

Tedizolid, at standard clinical doses, is expected to be bactericidal, and even achieved an unprecedented 2.0 log10 cfu/mL kill of MAC as monotherapy. We propose it as the backbone of short-course anti-MAC chemotherapy.