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[Indications for an increase in lung disease caused by Mycobacterium kansasii in the former Limburg mining area?]
E Cerdá de Palou1, M A Sulzer, J A van Noord
1GGD Oostelijk Zuid-Limburg, Heerlen.
Objective:
To establish the occurrence of lung disease caused by Mycobacterium kansasii in order to determine whether the incidence has increased since 1991.
Design:
Descriptive and retrospective.
Setting:
The former coal-mining region (Limburg) of the Netherlands.
Method:
The occurrence of lung disease caused by M. kansasii and other non tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) in the Netherlands and in the former coal-mining region in particular, was inferred from reports of tuberculosis of the national and local Public Health Authorities and of the Regional Public Health Laboratory.
Results:
Between 1991 and 1993 in the former coal-mining region of the Netherlands 43 cases of tuberculosis were reported, of which 12 afterwards proved to be caused by M. kansasii, i.e. more than were diagnosed in the ten preceding years. An epidemiological relationship between these patients could be neither established nor disproved.
Conclusion:
The incidence of NTM diseases may be increasing with falling prevalence rates of tuberculosis infection. As lung disease caused by M. kansasii is not transmissible from man to man and its treatment is different from that of lung tuberculosis, it is essential to be able to differentiate between these diagnoses quickly by using rapid modern microbiological identification methods, and to determine the epidemiological links.