Clinical challenges in the era of multiple and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis

Revista Panamericana De Salud Pública = Pan American Journal of Public Health
Rafael Laniado-Laborín

Abstract

In 2014, there were 480 000 new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) around the world, but only 25% of them were diagnosed and reported. Drug resistance in TB is necessarily a laboratory diagnosis. An urgent priority in everyday practice is to diagnose tuberculosis and rule out drug resistance as quickly and as accurately as possible. However, worldwide, only 12% of new bacteriologically confirmed TB cases and 58% of previously treated TB cases were tested for drug resistance in 2014. New tools for diagnosis of TB and drug-resistant TB have been introduced for clinical practice during the past decade. Those new tools can detect and identify drug resistance to antituberculosis drugs in less than 24 hours, and they should be urgently integrated into clinical practice, especially in high-burden regions. Ongoing transmission of TB generates new infections, and this infected population is the inexhaustible source of new TB cases. If we are really determined to stop the global TB epidemic, we need to treat active cases and also halt the transmission of the infection. The only strategy for preventing the development of active disease in individuals with subclinical infection is to give treatment for this latent infection...Continue Reading

Methods Mentioned

BETA
nucleic amplification

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