Recent successes in the fi ght against tuberculosis rely on short-course chemotherapy with our two most powerful drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin. Unfortunately, not only do hundreds of thousands of people or more still die every year of curable tuberculosis, but inadequate treatment has also contributed to the origination of strains of tuberculosis resistant to these two drugs, (ie, multidrug-r...

Frequency of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis in Pakistan increased from 1.5% in 2006 to 4.5% in 2009 (p<0.01). To understand the epidemiology, we genotyped selected strains by using spoligotyping, mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeats, and IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis.

Because of these high incidences and the increasing effects of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB), i.e., resistant to at least both isoniazid (INH) and rifampin (RIF), the laboratory-based Taiwan Surveillance of Drug Resistance in TB (TSDRTB) program was established in 2003 (2). Surveillance demonstrated that combined drug resistance rates were 11.3% for any fi rst-line drug; and 5.3% (2004) and 4...

To the Editor: Reports of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) in the Republic of South Africa have generated concern in the medical and public health literature (1,2). Given that XDR TB is spread through the air, it is not surprising that cases have been reported in multiple countries throughout the world (3). We report a documented case of XDR TB in Lesotho. This case is closely t...

disease in an immunocompromised patient. However, most cases of M. fortuitum pneumonia were reported before the use of molecular technology for species identifi cation. Newer species such as M. mageritense resemble M. fortuitum and would not have been differentiated without this method. Our patient met the criteria for diagnosing nontuberculous mycobacterial lung disease as established by the A...

Colombia, with a tuberculosis incidence of 33 cases per 100,000 population, is one of the countries that have reported extensively drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (XDR-TB). We report the high-quality draft genome sequences of two Latin American-Mediterranean XDR-TB clinical isolates (TBR-152 and TBR-175), comprising 4,303,775 bp and 4,330,115 bp, respectively.

We read with interest the letter by ESPOSITO et al. [1], reporting on the clinical management of a paediatric case of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in Milan, Italy, who faced a life-threatening condition [2, 3] that required access to an electronic Consilium [4]. The article is important as it describes a complex epidemic originated by a really difficult-to-treat case who had...