Epidemiological Trends and Resistance Profiles of Multidrug-Resistant and Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan (2013–2018)

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17476806

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) has been one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world and the development of drug resistant strains has continued to frustrate the attempts of health care laboratories and organisations in managing the disease. The objective of this paper was to evaluate prevalence and current state of resistance to multidrug-resistant (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, within the years, 2013 to 2018. The sample size was 400 clinically confirmed TB patients treated in Programmatic Management of Drug-Resistant TB (PMDT) in the unit of the Mufti Mehmood Memorial Teaching Hospital. Gene-Xpert and Drug Susceptibility Testing (DST) were employed in the analysis of sample contents of these 2 methods of receiving sputum samples and statistically analysed demographic and clinical variables with chi-square tests, SPSS v21.0. Out of all the cases, 99 (95.1) were found to be MDR-TB and 5 (4.8) were XDR-TB. Issues of MDR-TB were higher in females (98.3) than in males (90.7), whereas XDR-TB was also a bit higher in males (9.3). The peak prevalence of MDR-TB was noted among 2534years age category (95.4%), and the worst XDR-TB was during patients aged above 55 years (13.7%). It was more impacted on rural (95.7%) and unemployed (95) people. Though the difference between the demographics did not significantly differ according to the statistical basis ( p > 0.05), the results emphasise the necessity to have better surveillance, adherence to treatment, and enhanced healthcare service provision in rural Pakistan.