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Updated: Mar 26, 2026
Demonstrating a Multi-drug Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Amplification Microarray
Published on: April 25, 2014
A study on demographic characteristics of drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates in Belarus
L Surkova1, H L Horevich1, L P Titov2
1Research Institute for Pulmonology and Phthisiology, Belarus.
Objective:
A descriptive study of drug-resistance patterns by age group and among culture-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) patients referred to the Research Institute for Pulmonology and Phthisiology of Belarus between January 2007 and January 2008.
Methods:
Drug susceptibility tests were performed for first- and second-line anti-tuberculosis drugs. Patients were clustered into five resistance categories: mono-resistant (Mono); multi-drug resistant (MDR); all first-line drug resistance (MDR+ES); and extensively drug resistant (XDR). The patients were divided into primary and secondary and into six groups based on age in years (<15, 15-24, 25-44, 45-54, 55-65, and >65).
Results:
An analysis was undertaken of information gathered from 934TB patients, of whom 660 were men (70.67±1.5%) and 274 were women (29.33±1.5%) (p<0.001). In the age group 25-65years, men outnumbered women between 2.7 and 9.0 times higher. Cases of secondary TB totaled 414 (52.02±1.77%), and primary cases totaled 382 (47.98±1.77%) (p>0.05); 756 of the patients were of working age, and 170 were of non-working age, of whom 570 men of working age (18-60years) and 188 women of working age (18-55years) participated. Males were significantly more likely to have MDR-TB than females. All cases with XDR-TB were older than 14years old.
Conclusion:
As Belarus is a high-burden MDR-TB country and treatment of drug-resistant TB is long and complicated, the findings of this study provided useful information to deliver effective community-based disease control measures and a proposed plane for the effective management of drug-resistant TB at the national level.
