Tuberculosis and Its Predictors in Pakistani Population Transmission Dynamics and Drug Resistance of Mycobacterium

Abstract

Drug resistance in tuberculosis (TB) is biggest growing global health concern affecting 10 million people globally with 1.2 million deaths recently. TB is a highly contagious disease predominant infecting lungs. Inappropriate health care management system poor implementation on standard remains some reasons contributing to antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, in the present context two types of tuberculosis are identified, in which the mycobacterium is resistant to isoniazid and rifampicin called as multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and the other one is known as XDR-TB in which along with isoniazid and rifampin, resistance to at least one fluoroquinolone drug family and any of the second line drugs like amikacin, capreomycin, kanamycin occurs. There is a need of collecting data for frequency of occurrence of these resistant varieties for proper control and management of the disease. Thus, the current study focused on transmission dynamics and status of occurrence of drug resistance of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis in Pakistani population. The occurrence of TB bacteria in the patients of Pakistani population was tested by all three types of diagnostic methods. Smear sputum test, genetic profiling by GeneXpert test and drug susceptibility test by cultural growth on solid and liquid media was performed. The results showed that smear test of 72.9% patient were tested positive, while MTBC complex was detected in 100% patients with a variable bacterial load. The cultural growth on liquid media 83.2% while 16.8% were contaminated strains. However, in solid media 60.4% population growth was detected with 21.9% contamination. The Pakistani population was resistant against RIF is large majority while XDR and MDR resistance are not quit significant. A large number of antibiotics showed appreciable effectiveness against tuberculosis where amikacin was the most effective with Ethambutol, Pyrazinamide, Levofloxacin, Streptomycin, Kanamycin and Oxfloxacin being effective in decreasing order.