Tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis continues being a big public health problem around the world. The total number of cases of TB worldwide in 2009 was 9.4 million of which 1.8 million died of this disease, reported as the higher in history (Lawn & Zumla, 2011), World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the one third of global population is infected latently by M. tuberculosis (LTBI), however 10% will develop active disease (Zumla et al., 2011). Although several strategies and programs have been implemented and anti TB drugs have been available for 50 years, many TB patients are not diagnosed and treated at time (Ghanashyam, 2011; Sosnik et al., 2010). These mismanaged patients, with non-optimal treatments are the principal source of multidrugresistant TB (MDR-TB), which is resistant to the first line drugs isoniazid and rifampicin, as well as extensive drug resistant TB (XDR-TB), that in addition of isoniazid and rifampicin is resistant to any fluoroquinolone and any aminoglycoside second line anti TB injectable drugs (Koul et al., 2011). Other aspect that aggravates the situation is the coinfection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) disease, which increases the TB incidence rates three to five times and affected 1.1 million of TB cases in 2009 (Lawn & Zumla, 2011).

The most important control measures in TB are the prevention and chemotherapy. The current TB therapy has difficulties in controlling effectively the disease, due to inadequate adherence to treatment course caused by the length of time of medication and adverse reactions (Ginsberg & Spigelman, 2007). New antitubercular drugs should comply with following characteristics with the aim of reduce the low adherence that induce therapeutic failure and resistance: be active against MDR and XDR isolates, be active in less time to shorten the therapy, not interact with antiviral drugs, effectivity against latent TB infection, low toxicity and high bioavailability (Mitchinson & Fourie, 2010; Sosnik et al., 2010).