Emerging Threat: XDR (Extensively Drug-Resistant) Tuberculosis

Filed in archive Cases , Studies on November 1, 2006

According to an article published online last week in The Lancet, tuberculosis (TB) strains that are resistant to both first-line and second-line drugs are a threat to the success of not only tuberculosis programs, but also HIV treatment programs worldwide.

The said study of a team of investigators from the US and South Africa headed by Dr. Neel Gandhi, assistant professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, found that highly resistant strains of TB were more common than previously thought in a rural area of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and were associated with high death rates in patients with HIV infection.

TB accounts for approximately 1.7 million deaths worldwide, each year, and is the leading cause of death in HIV-infected patients in low-income countries.

The findings are both alarming and worrying, tuberculosis used to be easily cured by drugs, now the strains have turned extensively drug-resistant: the term now used to describe strains that are resistant to second-line drugs-i.e., drugs that are used if the recommended first drug treatment regimen fails.

Read the full report.

[Photo Credit: www.hpa.org.uk]