Tuberculosis is a contagious disease with comparatively high mortality worldwide. The statistics shows that around three million people throughout the world die annually from tuberculosis and there are around eight million new cases each year, of which developing countries showed major share. Therefore, the discovery and development of effective antituberculosis drugs with novel mechanism of action have become an insistent task for infectious diseases research programs. The literature reveals that, heterocyclic moieties have drawn attention of the chemists, pharmacologists, microbiologists, and other researchers owing to its indomitable biological potential as anti-infective agents. Among heterocyclic compounds, triazole (1,2,3-triazole/1,2,4-triazole) nucleus is one of the most important and well-known heterocycles, which is a common and integral feature of a variety of natural products and medicinal agents. Triazole core is considered as a privileged structure in medicinal chemistry and is widely used as 'parental' compounds to synthesize molecules with medical benefits, especially with infection-related activities. In the present review, we have collated published reports on this versatile core to provide an insight so that its complete therapeutic potential can be utilized for the treatment of tuberculosis. This review also explores triazole as a potential targeted core moiety against tuberculosis and various research ongoing worldwide. It is hoped that this review will be helpful for new thoughts in the quest for rational designs of more active and less toxic triazole-based antituberculosis drugs.
Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Tubercle bacillus; antitubercular; medicinal chemistry; synthesis; triazole.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons A/S.