Drug-resistant tuberculosis can be transmitted (primary) or develop during the course of treatment (secondary). We investigated risk factors for each type of resistance. We compared all patients in England and Wales with isoniazid- and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in two time-periods (1993-1994 and 1998-2000) with patients with fully sensitive tuberculosis, examining separately patients wit...

REFERENCES 1 Migliori GB, Besozzi G, Girardi E, et al. Clinical and operational value of the extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis definition. Eur Respir J 2007; 30: 623–626. 2 Migliori GB, Lange C, Centis R, et al. Resistance to secondline injectables and treatment outcomes in multidrugresistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis cases. Eur Respir J 2008; 31: 1155–1159. 3 World Heal...

Approximately half a million people are thought to develop multidrug-resistant tuberculosis annually. Barely 20% of these people currently receive recommended treatment and only about 10% are successfully treated. Poor access to treatment is probably driving the current epidemic, via ongoing transmission. Treatment scale-up is hampered by current treatment regimens, which are lengthy, expensive...

In view of emerging drug resistance among bacterial pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the development of novel therapeutic strategies is increasingly being sought. A recent paradigm in antituberculosis (anti-TB) drug development is to target the host molecules that are crucial for intracellular survival of the pathogen. We previously showed the importance of Src tyrosine kinases ...

INTRODUCTION Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis constitute a major threat to worldwide tuberculosis control. The treatment demands the use of a therapeutic regimen in second-line drugs for a minimum period of 20 months, which includes aminoglycosides over a period of about eight months. These are associated with permanent cochleovestibular changes. MA...

BACKGROUND Rapid and effective diagnosis of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is an essential component of global tuberculosis (TB) control, but most MDR-TB cases are still not diagnosed. OBJECTIVE To assess whether patient sputum bacterial load can be used to identify patients at increased risk of MDR-TB. METHODS We used a case-control study and multivariable logistic regression mo...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the main cause of tuberculosis (TB), has still remained a global health crisis especially in developing countries. Tuberculosis treatment is a laborious and lengthy process with high risk of non compliance, cytotoxicity adverse events and drug resistance in patient. Recently, there has been an alarming rise of drug resistant in TB. In this regard, it is an unmet need...

BACKGROUND The yield of mycobacterial blood cultures for multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) among drug-resistant TB suspects has not been described. METHODS We performed a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis to determine the yield of mycobacterial blood cultures for MDR-TB and XDR-TB among patients suspected of drug-resistant TB from rural South...

Currently, no information is available on the effect of resistance/susceptibility to first-line drugs different from isoniazid and rifampicin in determining the outcome of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) patients, and whether being XDR-TB is a more accurate indicator of poor clinical outcome than being resistant to all first-line anti-tuberculosis (TB) drugs. To investigate thi...

RATIONALE The multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis (TB) epidemics are rapidly expanding in South Africa. Our initial report of HIV-associated XDR TB in South Africa revealed rapid and near complete mortality. Lower mortality has been described in the literature, but few of these patients have been HIV coinfected. OBJECTIVES To characterize mortality from...