Tweet
Source: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...s-south-africa
Doctors Struggling to Fight 'Totally Drug-Resistant' Tuberculosis in South Africa
TB kills more people annually than any other infectious disease besides HIV
By Jason Koebler
February 11, 2013
In a patient's fight against tuberculosis?the bacterial lung disease that kills more people annually than any infectious disease besides HIV? doctors have more than 10 drugs from which to choose. Most of those didn't work for Uvistra Naidoo, a South African doctor who contracted the disease in his clinic. For those who contract the disease now, maybe none of them will.
A new paper published earlier this week in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal warns that the first cases of "totally drug-resistant" tuberculosis have been found in South Africa and that the disease is "virtually untreatable..."
Doctors Struggling to Fight 'Totally Drug-Resistant' Tuberculosis in South Africa
TB kills more people annually than any other infectious disease besides HIV
By Jason Koebler
February 11, 2013
In a patient's fight against tuberculosis?the bacterial lung disease that kills more people annually than any infectious disease besides HIV? doctors have more than 10 drugs from which to choose. Most of those didn't work for Uvistra Naidoo, a South African doctor who contracted the disease in his clinic. For those who contract the disease now, maybe none of them will.
A new paper published earlier this week in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal warns that the first cases of "totally drug-resistant" tuberculosis have been found in South Africa and that the disease is "virtually untreatable..."
and low culture-conversion rates (8.4%) over a follow-up period of 143 days. They concluded that only 1.7 drugs per patient could be regarded as “effective” on the basis of DST results, previous treatment records, or both. Given that this study was conducted concurrently with ours, it is highly likely that a large proportion of their patients were also infected with XDR TB strains with an atypical Beijing genotype. Thus, the poor treatment outcome may be related to the extent of drug-resistance; however, we cannot exclude the possibility that the atypical Beijing genotype contributes to illness and death. A further concern is the knowledge that this clone is now spreading to other provinces in South Africa, possibly due to migration. In Western Cape Province, an estimated 55% of XDR TB case-patients harbor isolates with the atypical Beijing genotype (32).
Comment