Drug resistance among retreatment tuberculosis patients in six provinces of China

Objective To analyze the prevalence of drug resistance among retreatment pulmonary tuberculosis(TB) patients in 6 provinces of China and to provide evidences for making strategies on the control of drug-resistant TB.Methods Information on demographics,results of sputum smear,bacteria isolation and identification and drug sensitivity test(DST)for 7338 retreatment TB patients were collected from Guangdong,Hubei,Henan,Shandong,and Zhejiang province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region from January 2008 through December 2010.SPSS 12.0 was used to analyze differences in drug resistance among the patients.Results For all the retreatment TB patients,7290 had sputum culture for Mycobacterium tuberculosis detection,of which 5403 had positive results and DST was conducted for all positive specimens.For all the strains isolated,48.3% were resistant to isoniazid,45.8% to rifampin,20.2% to ofloxacin,and 6.3% to kanamycin and the ratio of multidrug resistant(MDR) and extensively drug resistant(XDR) were 36.6% and 1.1%,respectively.Among all the patients,those with ineffective medication had the highest prevalence of MDR(56.3%) and XDR(3.1%).Conclusion The prevalence of MDR and XDR are at a high level among retreatment TB patients and the prevalence is the highest among the retreatment patients with ineffective medication.