Pharmacy Faculty of UAD Enhances Research on Tuberculosis Medicine

The dean of Pharmacy Faculty, University of Ahmad Dahlan (UAD), Dr. Dyah Aryani Perwitasari, M.Si., Ph.D., Apt. said that this year the faculty enhances a research on tuberculosis medicine (TB) in some areas outside Java with endemic cases.

‘It is expected that TB patients will accept it and it will be more effective and produce no harmful side effect,’ she said at Campus III UAD last Tuesday (22/06/2016)

The faculty itself has once carried out similar research for four years from 2012 to 2016 at 20 public health centers in Yogyakarta and Lampung.

The research uses samples of patients’ blood, DNA, and saliva of TB patients in the public health centers periodically. Pharmacy Faculty employed special students to take the samples fortninghtly.

From the analysis result, 20% out of 200 TB patients suffered from liver problems.

‘The patients, who were the subject of research have consume the medicine regularly for 2 months. In fact the medicine should be consumed for six months. If they stop consuming the medicine they will become resistant to the medicine or MDR TB. This situation is more dangerous,’ she said.

Because of that, Diah said, this research is necessary so that the treatment can go on well. This is because the treatment should continue amidst the liver problem.

‘Frankly speaking there are some researches on TB, those are the side effect of medicine, the medicine resistance, and the content of medicine in blood, which are under experiment for the analysis,’ explained public relation of the faculty Ichwan Ridwan Rais, S.Far., M.Sc., Apt.

Furthermore, he said Pharmacy Faculty will cooperate with some agents and institutions in relation to public health. The research is done in Yogyakarta and outside Java.