Tuberculosis Research and Treatment

AIM: We aimed to investigate the demographic and clinical factors associated with TB mortality in patients managed at a tertiary TB referral center. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective review of the medical records of 1,933 TB patients seen between January 2017 and December 2020 at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) Chest Department in Accra, Ghana. TB mortality was defined as any TB patient who died for any reason during the course of treatment. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate adjusted odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals for factors associated with TB mortality...

INTRODUCTION: Prisoners in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are at a high risk of tuberculosis (TB) infection due to overcrowding and poor ventilation. Consequently, TB is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in prison, and many inmates face a number of barriers to TB control and had limited information in the region. Thus, the aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to estimate the overall pooled prevalence of pulmonary TB and predictors among prison inmates in SSA. METHODS: From 2006 to 2019, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted using various databases, including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus...

INTRODUCTION: Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Regardless of many efforts made to control tuberculosis, the disease remains to be a major public health problem. Nonadherence to antituberculosis treatment poses a challenge to the disease treatment as it potentially increases the risk of drug resistance, mortality, relapse, and extended infectiousness. The North Shewa Zone had a poor performed on TB control status, so this study assessed the prevalence of antituberculosis drug nonadherence and its associated factors at governmental health institutions in Debre Berhan town, North Shewa Zone, Ethiopia, 2020...

BACKGROUND: Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) epidemic in high-TB-incidence countries, particularly Ethiopia, remains a significant challenge. As a result, we investigated the drug resistance, common gene mutation, and molecular characterization of mycobacterial isolates from patients with suspected tuberculous lymphadenitis (TBLN). Methodology . A cross-sectional study of 218 FNA samples from TBLN patients inoculated on Lowenstein-Jensen media was carried out. The culture isolates were identified as MTB by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the difference-9 (RD9) test region...

INTRODUCTION: Tuberculosis (TB) was one of the top causes of ill health and the leading cause of deaths worldwide until the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Hence, this study is aimed at assessing the prevalence of sputum smear-positive TB and associated factors among TB-suspected patients attending in Gedeo Zone health facilities, Southern Ethiopia. METHODS: A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 220 TB-suspected patients in Gedeo Zone health facilities from July 01 to Sep 30, 2021...

PURPOSE: In the Philippines, drug-resistant tuberculosis (DRTB) is a growing concern. Healthcare workers face challenges in retaining patients with DRTB in care. This study intends to understand their perspectives on the factors that influence patient treatment outcomes and to propose potential programmatic solutions for strengthening care services for the patients. METHODS: A mixed-methods study was conducted in the Philippines between December 2017 and March 2018 to understand the major barriers for healthcare workers to provide quality care to DRTB patients across the care continuum...

Tuberculosis is still one of the most severe progressive diseases; it severely limits the social and economic development of many countries. In the present study, the topic trend of scientific publications on tuberculosis has been examined using text mining techniques and co-word analysis with an analytical approach. The statistical population of the study is all global publications related to tuberculosis. In order to extract the data, the Scopus citation database was used for the period 1900 to 2022. The main keywords for the search strategy were chosen through consultation with thematic specialists and using MESH...

Background: Active case finding (ACF) for tuberculosis (TB) is a key strategy to reduce diagnostic delays, expedite treatment, and prevent transmission. Objective: Our objective was to identify the populations, settings, screening and diagnostic approaches that optimize coverage (proportion of those targeted who were screened) and yield (proportion of those screened who had active TB) in ACF programs. Methods: We performed a comprehensive search to identify studies published from 1980-2016 that reported the coverage and yield of different ACF approaches...

Background: Ethiopia is one of the highest tuberculosis burden countries globally, and tuberculosis is one of the most pressing health problems nationally. Weight gain during treatment is the main indicator of good treatment outcome, but there is no adequate information regarding the factors that affect weight gain in Ethiopia. Objective: The objective of this study was to identify determinants of weight gain among adult tuberculosis patients during the intensive phase, in Debre Markos town public health institutions Northwest Ethiopia, 2020...

Background: Advancing a research agenda designed to meet the specific needs of children is critical to ending pediatric TB epidemic. Systematic reviews are increasingly informing policies in pediatric tuberculosis (TB) care and control. However, there is a paucity of information on pediatric TB research priorities. Methodology . We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library for systematic reviews and meta-analyses on any aspect related to pediatric TB published between 2015 and 2021...

Background: Tuberculosis remains to be a public health threat in Ethiopia. However, the use of ill diagnostic methods and the lack of enough epidemiological information in the country contributed to the diagnostic delay and development of anti-TB drug resistance. Therefore, the present study is aimed at assessing the prevalence of pulmonary TB (PTB) and the development of drug resistance using GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay in Merhabete district, Central Ethiopia. Methods: A cross-sectional, health facility-based study was conducted from December 2019 to June 2020...

Infection by the human immune deficiency virus (HIV) is the strongest risk factor for latent or new infection of tuberculosis (TB) through reduction of CD4 T-lymphocytes and cellular immune function. Almost one-third of deaths among people living with HIV are attributed to tuberculosis. Despite this evidence, in Ethiopia, there is a scarcity of information regarding the incidence of tuberculosis for children living with HIV. Thus, this study assessed time to develop and predictors for incidence of tuberculosis in children attending HIV/AIDS care in public hospitals: North West Ethiopia 2021...

Background: In Ethiopia, tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most common causes of illness and death. However, there is limited information available on lineages associated with drug resistance among extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients in Ethiopia. In this study, researchers looked into Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineages linked to drug resistance in patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: On 151 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates, a cross-sectional analysis was performed...

Introduction: Tuberculosis poses a great threat to public health around the globe and affects persons mostly in their productive age, notwithstanding; everyone is susceptible to tuberculosis (TB) infection. To assess the effectiveness and performance of the tuberculosis control program activities, the percentage of cases with treatment success outcome is key. To control tuberculosis, interrupting transmission through effective treatment cannot be overemphasized. The study was conducted to determine factors associated with TB treatment outcome, in the Atwima Nwabiagya District from 2007-2017...

Uganda is among the 22 countries in the world with a high burden of tuberculosis. The southwestern region of the country has consistently registered a high TB/HIV incidence rate. This study is aimed at characterizing the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) genotypic diversity in southwestern Uganda. A total of 283 sputum samples from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis were genotyped using specific single nucleotide polymorphism markers for lineages 3 and 4. Most of the patients were males with a mean age of 34...

Background: Informal (unqualified) health care providers are an important source of medical care for persons with presumptive TB (PPTB) in India. A project (titled RIPEND) was implemented to engage informal providers for the identification of PPTBs and TB patients in 4 districts of Telangana State, India, during October 2018-December 2019 project period. Engagement involved sensitizing the informal providers about TB, providing them financial incentives to identify PPTBs, and linking these PPTBs to diagnostic and treatment services provided by the Government of India's National TB Elimination Programme...

BACKGROUND: To cure drug-resistant (DR) tuberculosis (TB), the antituberculous treatment should be guided by Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug-susceptibility testing (DST). In this study, we compared conventional DST performed in Minsk, Belarus, a TB DR high-burden country, with extensive geno- and phenotypic analyses performed at the WHO TB Supranational Reference Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, for TB/HIV coinfected patients. Subsequently, DST results were related to treatment regimen and outcome...

Annually, ten million cases of tuberculosis (TB) and about 1.8 million mortalities are recorded. Adherence to TB treatment not only reduces death outcomes but prevents prolonged sickness, transmission to others, and the development of multidrug-resistant TB. This study is aimed at determining the rate of treatment adherence, knowledge of TB infection, and the possible factors influencing adherence to TB treatment in the Ketu North District in the Volta Region of Ghana. A cross-sectional study design was employed...

The WHO END TB strategy requires ≥90% case detection to combat tuberculosis (TB). Increased TB case detection requires a more sensitive and specific screening tool. Currently, the symptoms recommended for screening TB have been found to be suboptimal since up to 44% of individuals with TB are asymptomatic. The chest X-ray (CXR) as a screening tool for pulmonary TB was evaluated in this study, as well as its incremental yield in TB diagnosis using a cross-sectional study involving secondary analysis of data of 4512 consented/assented participants ≥15 years who participated in the Uganda National TB prevalence survey between 2014 and 2015...

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) transmission is an important problem, particularly in low-income settings. This study is aimed at assessing the knowledge, attitude, and practices of DR-TB infection control among the healthcare workers under the National Tuberculosis Control Program in Nepal. In this cross-sectional study, we studied the healthcare workers from all the 11 functioning DR-TB treatment centers across Nepal in March 2018. Through face-to-face interviews, trained data collectors collected data on the characteristics of healthcare workers, their self-reported knowledge, attitude, and practice on DR-TB infection control...