BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a major health problem in developing countries. Contact investigation is the most appropriate strategy to interrupt transmission and subsequent development of TB. METHODS This cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the impact of contact screening on case-finding by using tuberculin skin test chest radiography. Contacts of smear-positive pati...

Objective: To compare the mean C reactive protein levels in clinically diagnosed adult patients with smear positive and smear negative pulmonary tuberculosis. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at the Department of General Medicine Military Hospital Rawalpindi from 21 May to 25 Sep 2011. Material and Methods: In this study 150 patients of c...

INTRODUCTION The existing diagnostic algorithms for sputum smear-negative tuberculosis (TB) are complicated, time-consuming, and often difficult to implement. The decision to initiate TB treatment in resource-limited countries is often largely based on clinical predictors. We sought to determine the clinical predictors and accuracy of empiric TB treatment initiation in HIV-infected sputum smear...

BACKGROUND Many patients treated for tuberculosis (TB) in low and middle income countries are treated based on clinical suspicion without bacteriological confirmation. This is often due to lack of rapid simple accurate diagnostics and low healthcare provider confidence in the predictive value of current tests. We previously reported in an animal TB model that levels of host markers rapidly chan...

Despite a Mycobacterium tuberculosis control programme and anti-tuberculosis drugs, drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is one of the most serious public health issues worldwide. Rapid laboratory diagnosis of M. tuberculosis is needed for the diagnosis of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB and to find the optimal treatment protocol. The purpose of this study was to detect resistance to rifampicin in ...

Prevalence of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) disease is poorly documented in countries with high prevalence of tuberculosis (TB). We describe prevalence, risk factors, and TB program implications for NTM isolates and disease in Cambodia. A prospective cohort of 1,183 patients with presumptive TB underwent epidemiologic, clinical, radiologic, and microbiologic evaluation, including >12-months...

background: tuberculosis remains a worldwide public health problem and india accounts for highest tb burden in the world. the aim of the study was to evaluate the trend and treatment outcome of tuberculosis (tb) cases treated under dots strat­egy at a district level in karnataka, india. methods : this was a retrospective record based study conducted in dakshina kannada district of karnataka, du...

CONTEXT Contact investigations are routinely conducted by health departments throughout the United States for all cases of active pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) to identify secondary cases of active TB and latent TB infection and to initiate therapy as needed in these contacts. Little is known about the actual procedures followed, or the results. OBJECTIVES To evaluate contact investigations con...