BACKGROUND Swaziland has the highest HIV prevalence in the world and the highest estimated tuberculosis incidence rate in the world. An estimated 80% of TB patients are also infected with HIV. TB detection through intensified case finding (ICF) has yet to become a routine aspect of integrated tuberculosis and HIV care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate implementation of ICF for TB into ...

INTRODUCTION Ascendant trend of tuberculosis in the world introduces this disease to be one of the most important infectious diseases in the world. So that every year, 9 million people are afflicted to active TB and about 5.1 million people die of the disease. As the HIV contaminated cases are increased, emergence and spread field of Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) bacilli has been pr...

BACKGROUND In 2009 Lesotho had an estimated TB prevalence of 696 cases/100 000 population - the 4th highest in the world. This epidemic was characterised by high rates of death, treatment failure and unknown treatment outcomes. These adverse outcomes were attributable to a high rate of TB and/or HIV co-infection and weaknesses in the implementation of Lesotho's National Tuberculosis Programme (...

P atients with diabetes mellitus (DM) are at higher risk of tuberculosis (TB) (1), especially in China, where there is a high burden of both diseases (2). Comorbidity of DM and TB (DM 1 TB) results in higher probabilities of treatment failure, multidrug resistance, and death (3). In China, epidemiologic information for DM 1 TB is limited, and effective tools to identify cases of DM 1 TB are not...

conclusion fm is more sensitive than zn for diagnosis of tb. however, since fm is more sensitive and rapid, using this method in clinical laboratories with large specimen numbers is recommended. results a total of 102 out of 920 study subjects had pulmonary tb, of them 68 (66.66%) patients were smear positive by either staining method while others were smear negative. the proportion of positive...

Trained African giant-pouched rats (Cricetomys gambianus) can detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis and show potential for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). However, rats' ability to discriminate between clinical sputum containing other Mycobacterium spp. and nonmycobacterial species of the respiratory tract is unknown. It is also unknown whether nonmycobacterial species produce odor similar to M...

Objective To examine the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and related factors among patients with smear-positive and smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) within 2 years after completion of directly observed treatment, short course (DOTS), and to compare their HRQoL with a comparison group of community-dwelling individuals without TB in South Tarawa, Kiribati. Methods A cross-section...

BACKGROUND Measuring the size of the infectious pool of tuberculosis (TB) is essential to understand the burden and monitor trends of TB control program performance. This study applied the concept of TB management time to estimate and compare the size of the TB infectious pool between 2009 and 2014 in West Gojjam Zone of Amhara Region, Ethiopia. METHODS New sputum smear-positive and smear-neg...

The Peruvian National Tuberculosis Control Program issued guidelines in 2006 specifying criteria for culture and drug-susceptibility testing (DST), including district-level rapid DST. All patients referred for culture and DST in 2 districts of Lima, Peru, during January 2005-November 2008 were monitored prospectively. Of 1,846 patients, 1,241 (67.2%) had complete DST results for isoniazid and r...

BACKGROUND Globally, TB notifications have stagnated since 2007, and sputum smear positive notifications have been declining despite policies to improve case detection. We evaluate results of 28 interventions focused on improving TB case detection. METHODS We measured additional sputum smear positive cases treated, defined as the intervention area's increase in case notification during the pr...