The routine tuberculosis (TB) surveillance system in Cambodia has been strengthened under the National TB Programme (NTP). This paper provides an overview of the TB surveillance data for Cambodia at the national level for the period 2000 to 2013 and at the subnational level for 2013. The proportion of the total population that were screened for TB rose from 0.4% in 2001 to 1.1% in 2013, while t...

The proportion of patients with recurrent tuberculosis (TB) is reported to be increased in TB patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection after they have completed treatment. Despite rising HIV seroprevalence amongst TB patients in Malawi, notifications of patients with relapse smear-positive pulmonary TB (PTB) and recurrent smear-negative TB have remained stable during the past ...

Diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in technology-limited countries is widely achieved by smear microscopy, which has limited sensitivity and specificity. The frequency and clinical implication of smear-positive but culture-negative among presumptive TB patients remains unclear. A cross-sectional substudy was conducted which aimed to identify the proportion of nontuberculous mycobacteria (...

BACKGROUND Rapid and accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) is crucial to facilitate early treatment of infectious cases and thus to reduce its spread. To improve the diagnosis of TB, more rapid diagnostic techniques such as antibody detection methods including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based serological tests and immunochromatographic methods were developed. This study was des...

BACKGROUND Nigeria ranks fourth among the 22 high tuberculosis (TB) burden countries. The estimated incidence of all TB cases in 2009 was 311/100,000 population. Since the implementation of DOTS in Ebonyi state, southeast Nigeria, the epidemiology of TB in the region has not been documented. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the type and case notification dynamics of TB follo...

Background: One of the fundamental issues of infectious disease treatment is drug resistance. The aim of the present study was to investigate the first-line anti-tuberculosis drug resistance rates and determine the risk factors related to multidrug resistant mycobacterium tuberculosis.Methods: From March 2011 to September 2012, mycobacterial strains were collected from one hundred fifteen diagn...

BACKGROUND Decentralization of DOTS has increased the number of cured smear-positive tuberculosis (TB) patients. However, the rate of recurrence has increased mainly due to HIV infection. Recurrence rate could be taken as an important measure of long-term success of TB treatment. We aimed to find out the rate of recurrence in smear-positive patients cured under DOTS in southern Ethiopia. METH...

BACKGROUND The existing World Health Organization diagnostic algorithms for smear-negative TB perform poorly in HIV-infected individuals. New TB diagnostics such as urine TB lipoarabinomannan (LAM) could improve the accuracy and reduce delays in TB diagnosis in HIV-infected smear-negative presumptive TB. We sought to determine predictors for MTB culture-positivity among these patients. METHOD...

OBJECTIVE To assess the feasibility of a streamlined strategy for improving tuberculosis (TB) diagnostic evaluation and treatment initiation among patients with presumed TB. DESIGN Single-arm interventional pilot study at five primary care health centers of a streamlined, SIngle-saMPLE (SIMPLE) TB diagnostic evaluation strategy: 1) examination of two smear results from a single spot sputum sp...