BACKGROUND In 2011, World Health Organization revised its recommendation for microbiological monitoring during treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) by increasing the frequency of culture examination from quarterly to monthly after culture conversion. Implementing the recommendation requires substantial additional investment in laboratory infrastructure. The objective of this ...

The National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System received 1,201 tuberculosis (TB) notifications in 2006, of which 1,142 were new cases and 59 were relapses. The incidence of TB in Australia was 5.8 cases per 100,000 population in 2006 up from 5.3 per 100,000 in 2005, but still below 6 per 100,000 as it has been since 1985. Eighty-five per cent of TB notifications in 2006 were in people born ...

SETTING Five districts in Sri Lanka. OBJECTIVES To determine: 1) the proportion of sputum smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) cases who failed to smear convert at 2 months, 2) their management, and 3) whether baseline characteristics and final treatment outcomes were different from those who did smear convert. DESIGN Cross-sectional retrospective review of medical files, tuberculosi...

Even though the number of notified tuberculosis (TB) cases in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region has continuously gone down, from 474,794 in 2007 to 380,366 in 2011 [1], there is no room for complacency. The number of extrapulmonary TB (EPTB) cases in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) is not decreasing and a considerable number of TB patients do not f...

BACKGROUND There is increasing concern about the risk of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) reactivation during the use of biologics for psoriasis. Although ustekinumab had been documented with low risk of tuberculosis, the long-term follow-up of LTBI as determined by QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-G) testing in patients treated with ustekinumab is limited. OBJECTIVES This study aims to use seria...

The performance of the fully automated BACTEC MGIT 960 (M960) system for the testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis susceptibility to streptomycin (SM), isoniazid (INH), rifampin (RMP), ethambutol (EMB), and pyrazinamide (PZA) was evaluated with 100 clinical isolates and compared to that of the radiometric BACTEC 460TB (B460) system. The agar proportion method and the B460 system were used as re...

INTRODUCTION Tuberculosis remains a major public health problem in developing countries. Diagnosing extrapulmonary tuberculosis can be difficult, as it requires a higher index of suspicion than primary tuberculosis. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis may mimic malignancies and many other diseases, so it should be included in the differential diagnosis. Here, we present a case of extrapulmonary tubercu...

Bones and joints, among other extrapulmonary organs, are most often affected by tuberculosis. The clinical picture is «hidden», the diagnosis of disease delayed for a long time with all negative consequences.
 Objective — to study trend in incidence tuberculosis bone joint localization Sumy region residents recent years draw attention general practitioners urgent problem today.
 Mater...

SETTING Belarus (Eastern Europe) is facing an epidemic of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). In 2012, rapid molecular diagnostics were prioritised for sputum smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients to diagnose MDR-TB, while pulmonary sputum smear-negative pulmonary TB (SN-PTB) patients were investigated using conventional methods, often delaying the diagnosis of MDR-TB by 2...

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is on the rise, and is difficult to treat. The approval of two new drugs, bedaquiline and delamanid, and growing evidence for the use of linezolid, offer renewed hope for addressing MDR-TB. However, access to these medicines remains a significant challenge. These drugs have not been registered for TB in most settings; barriers to preapproval access pers...