Treatment of Comorbid Tuberculosis and Depression

Depression: a silent driver of the global tuberculosis epidemic

“…In Peru, a psychosocial support group intervention was developed for MDR-TB patients which improved treatment adherence and completion, as well as social rehabilitation after treatment (1). Finally, antidepressants, in isolation or in conjunction with other therapies, have also been effectively used to treat depression among patients with TB (10).…”

Prevalence of psychosis in tuberculosis patients and their nontuberculosis family contacts in a multidrug treatment-resistant treatment center in Nigeria

“…About three decades ago, the prevalence of TB suddenly rose [3] among patients receiving psychiatric treatment [4], and the association between psychiatric disorders and TB infection became clearer [5]. A major factor responsible for failure of TB control is nonadherence to anti-TB medications secondary to a psychiatric illness [6,7], of which medication side-effects is a major factor [8].…”

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“…The situation has greatly worsened with the recent surge in co-infection of tuberculosis with HIV infection [27][28][29]. However, the introduction of chemotherapy has significantly reduced the morbidity and mortality [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Tuberculosis and HIV are two chronic infective medical diseases which have been found to be associated with psychiatric comorbidity [38,39] and this furthers affect the quality of life of the sufferers [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52].…”

“…Generally, the prevalence of comorbid depression with a chronic physical condition ranges between 25 and 33%. The risk of depression increases with the severity and duration of the illness [30,32] and this often presents a management challenge to physicians [2,30,[66][67][68][69][70][71].…”