Most individuals with drug-resistant TB caught it from someone else, study suggests

By Dr Deepu

study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests most individuals who have drug-resistant tuberculosis caught it from someone else. In the past, some experts and physicians believed that drug resistance resulted from ineffective treatment with tuberculosis medications. The study was conducted in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
       Tracked TB that is resistant to at least four key drugs and found that 69% of the victims had never received treatment, which suggests “that they had acquired it from others with extensively drug-resistant TB.”
       This study might be a eye opener for the prevention of transmission of disease to the health care workers by the drug resistant TB patients and also the family members of the patients who are at a highest risk.
  Recently in our practice we encountered a young nursing student in her teens, who contracted MDR tuberculosis and had to be put on standard TB regimen for MDR.