In the UK, HIV is considered to be a risk factor for antituberculosis drug resistance. Evidence of the association is, however, inconclusive and there are few population-level data. The present study investigated the association in England and Wales during the period 1999-2005. National tuberculosis surveillance data for adults were matched to HIV/AIDS reports. Unmatched cases were assumed to b...

RATIONALE Globally there are approximately 9 million new active tuberculosis cases and 1.4 million deaths annually. Effective antituberculosis treatment monitoring is difficult as there are no existing biomarkers of poor adherence or inadequate treatment earlier than 2 months after treatment initiation. Inadequate treatment leads to worsening disease, disease transmission and drug resistance. ...

BACKGROUND The emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDRTB) is a threat to global tuberculosis control. Limited information is, however, available on the outcome of XDRTB cases. This study describes the susceptibility to second- and third-line antituberculosis drugs among MDRTB cases and treatment outcome of identified XDRTB cases. ...

The elimination of tuberculosis (TB) is threatened by an apparent increase in the level of resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In the Netherlands, where the majority of TB patients are migrants, resistance may also be increasing. We conducted a retrospective study, using 18,294 M. tuberculosis isolates from TB cases notified between 1993 and 2011. We investigated the trends in antitubercu...

The emergence of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) compromises global tuberculosis control. The incidence of multidrug-resistant strains (MDR) defined as resistant to the two main antituberculosis drugs, rifampicin and isoniazid, was raised in the 1990s. Ten percent of these strains have developed additional resistance to the main second-line antituberculosis drugs: fluoroquinolones and aminogly...

An optimal assay for high-throughput screening for new antituberculosis agents would combine the microplate format and low cost of firefly luciferase reporter assays and redox dyes with the ease of kinetic monitoring inherent in the BACTEC system. The green fluorescent protein (GFP) of the jellyfish Aequorea victoria is a useful reporter molecule which requires neither substrates nor cofactors ...

OBJECTIVE Immigration to Spain from countries with high rates of tuberculosis infection is increasing. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze resistance to antituberculosis drugs in strains isolated from foreign-born patients in the Community of Madrid. PATIENTS AND METHODS A cohort of immigrants was identified at 14 hospitals in the Community of Madrid. To assess the sensitivity o...

Evaluation of sources of pharmacokinetic variation can facilitate optimization of tuberculosis treatment regimens by identification of avoidable sources of variation and of risk factors for low or high drug concentrations in patients. Our objective was to describe the pharmacokinetics of rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol in a cohort of tuberculosis patients established on first-...