OBJECTIVES Concomitant food intake influences pharmacokinetics of first-line anti-TB drugs in healthy volunteers. However, in treatment-naive TB patients who are starting with drug treatment, data on the influence of food intake on the pharmacokinetics are absent. This study aimed to quantify the influence of food on the pharmacokinetics of isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol and pyrazinamide in ...

OBJECTIVES To determine the association between embB mutations and drug resistance, and to further investigate the mechanism of embB mutations involved in the development of ethambutol and multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. METHODS One hundred and thirty-eight multidrug-resistant clinical M. tuberculosis isolates, including 86 ethambutol-resistant and 52 ethambutol-susceptibl...

BACKGROUND The Taiwan health authority recently launched several tuberculosis (TB) control interventions, which may have an impact on the epidemic of drug-resistant TB. We conducted a population-based antituberculosis drug resistance surveillance program in Eastern Taiwan to measure the proportions of notified TB patients with anti-TB drug resistance and the trend from 2004 to 2008. METHODS A...

Motivation Correct and rapid determination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) resistance against available tuberculosis (TB) drugs is essential for the control and management of TB. Conventional molecular diagnostic test assumes that the presence of any well-studied single nucleotide polymorphisms is sufficient to cause resistance, which yields low sensitivity for resistance classification. ...

In 1998 a network of 20 regional tuberculosis (TB) laboratories (the Italian Multicentre Study on Resistance to Antituberculosis drugs (SMIRA) network) was established in Italy to implement proficiency testing and to monitor the prevalence of drug resistance nationwide. The network managed 30% of all TB cases reported in Italy each year. The aim of the present report is to describe: 1) the accu...

OBJECTIVES The clinical significance of the emergence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) isolates that contain rpoB mutations (genotypic resistance), but are phenotypically susceptible to rifampicin (RIF G(R) P(S)), remains uncertain. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of MTB cases that demonstrate this discordant rifampicin resistance pattern and to establish whether these ...

In the UK, HIV is considered to be a risk factor for anti-tuberculosis drug resistance. Evidence on the association is, however, inconclusive and there is little population level data. This study investigated the association in England and Wales during 1999-2005. National tuberculosis surveillance data for adults were matched to HIV/AIDS reports. Unmatched cases were assumed to be HIV-negative....

MULTIDRUG-RESISTANT tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is defined as a form of tuberculosis (TB) due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis that is resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs. This form of TB was documented in nearly every country surveyed by the World Health Organization (WHO)/International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) Global Drug Resi...