Tuberculosis drug-resistance in Lisbon, Portugal: a 6-year overview

Multidrug-resistance and extensive drug-resistance pose a serious threat to tuberculosis management in Portugal. The country has high TB incidence rates in comparison with other European Union countries, with the Lisbon Health Region being one of the most affected. In the present study we have analysed a convenience sample of 3025 Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates, recovered over a 6-year period (2001-2006) in the Lisbon Health Region, regarding drug-resistance both to first-line and second-line drugs. Moreover, 100 of these isolates were also genotyped by 12-loci Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Unit - Variable Number of Tandem Repeats (MIRU-VNTR) analysis. We have compared each year and observed the existence of 22 different resistance profiles, with MDR-TB rates ranging between 9.9% and 15.2% and XDR-TB rates, relative to the number of MDR-TB isolates, between 44.3% and 66.1% (excluding 1 year here considered as an outlier). A steady increase in the fraction of MDR-TB isolates resistant to all first-line drugs was also noticed. The genotyping analysis of MDR-TB isolates revealed six clusters, of which three (Lisboa3, Lisboa4 and Q1) were related to XDR-TB. Our results show that active transmission of MDR- and XDR-TB is taking place and that the high prevalence of observed XDR-TB is due to the continued transmission of particular genetic clusters. Enforcement of the implementation of genotyping in diagnostic routines would lead to early detection of resistant cases.