Drug-Resistant TB Rapidly Spreading Globally, Say Scientists
A recent medical study published reveals the rapid increase of a new strand of drug-resistant tuberculosis around the world causing alarm throughout the medical community.
The study, published in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday, showed rapidly increasing rates of two drug-resistant forms of the disease, TB (MDR-TB) as well as TB (XDR-TB), and both were occurring at rates higher than when previously researched.
The report cited increased levels of the drug-resistant strains showing up in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Scientists explained that the strains are powerful and up to four powerful known antibiotic drugs are ineffective at curing the ailment, Reuters reported.
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"Most international recommendations for TB control have been developed for MDR-TB prevalence of up to around 5 percent. Yet now we face prevalence up to 10 times higher in some places, where almost half of the patients ... are transmitting MDR strains," Sven Hoffner, of the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control, said in a statement.
MDR-TB is resistant to two known first-line drugs, Isoniazid and Rifampicin. XDR-TB is resistant to those two drugs and also a drug called a Fluoroquinolone, which is a second-line antibiotic.
Researchers who studied rates of the disease in Estonia, Latvia, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand discovered that nearly 44 percent of MDR TB cases were resistant to at least one second-line drug.
"As more individuals are diagnosed with, and treated for, drug-resistant TB, more resistance to second-line drugs is expected to emerge," Tracy Dalton from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who also led the Lancet study, told Reuters.
Current records indicate that tuberculosis is already a worldwide pandemic that infected 8.8 million people and killed 1.4 million in 2010. One factor scientists say is contributing to the increase in drug-resistant strains is that many patients don't finish their treatment properly.
