Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and Nontuberculous Mycobacteria Isolates from Presumptive Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients Attending A Tertiary Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Mycobacterial infections are known to cause a public health problem globally. The burden of pulmonary disease from nontuberculous mycobacteria is reportedly on the rise in different parts of the world despite the fact that there is limited data about the disease in sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia. Hence, we aimed to assess the magnitude of M. tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) among presumptive pulmonary tuberculosis patients attending St. Paul's hospital Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted from June to September 20/2016. Morning sputum specimens were collected, processed and cultured in Lowenstein Jensen medium and BACTEC MGIT 960 media. The nontuberculous mycobacteria were further confirmed and characterized by Genotype CM/AS assays. The socio-demographic, clinical and chest x-ray data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 20. RESULTS: Out of 275 presumptive tuberculosis patients enrolled in the study, 29(10.5%) were culture positive for Mycobacteria. Of these, 3(10.3%) were found to be NTM and 26(89.6%) were Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Of the NTM, two were unidentified and one typed as M.peregrinum. There was no co-isolation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and nontuberculous mycobacteria. Overall, 6(23.1%) Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates were resistant to at least one anti-tuberculosis drug. Of these, two were multidrug resistant tuberculosis cases (7.7%) detected from previously treated patients. CONCLUSION: Relatively low magnitude of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and nontuberculous mycobacteria isolates were seen in the study area. Therefore, further study using a large sample size is needed to be done to consider nontuberculous mycobacteria infection as a differential diagnosis in presumptive pulmonary tuberculosis patients.

Surveillance of drug resistance tuberculosis based on reference laboratory data in Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Both passive and active surveillance of drug resistance have an important role in tuberculosis (TB) control program. Surveillance data are important to estimate the magnitude of drug resistance TB, to know the trend of the disease, assess the performance of the program, and to forecast diagnosis and treatment supplies. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the prevalence and the proportion of drug resistant tuberculosis in Ethiopia based on passively collected data. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory and seven Regional TB laboratories in Ethiopia on a retrospective data collected from July 2017 to June, 2018. Data were collected by standardized checklist from TB culture laboratory registration book. Percentage of recovery rate, contamination rate, and prevalence of drug resistance TB were determined by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23. RESULT: Of 10 134 TB suspected individuals included into this analysis, 1183 (11.7%) were culture positive. The overall contamination proportion was 5.3% and nontuberculous mycobacteria proportion was 0.98%. First-line drug susceptibility test was performed for 329 Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates, and the proportion of resistance was 5.7 and 6.3% for isoniazid and rifampicin respectively. The proportion of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) was 4.3% in new patients, while 6.7% in previously treated patients. However, there was no category for 0.6% patients, and the overall proportion of MDR-TB was 11.6%. CONCLUSIONS: The result of this study indicated that MDR-TB is a serious public health problem in Ethiopia. Thus, strengthen prevention and control program is vital to halt the burden of drug resistant TB in the country.