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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 57% of TB patients given wrong drugs -Malathy Iyer

57% of TB patients given wrong drugs -Malathy Iyer

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published Published on Feb 15, 2015   modified Modified on Feb 15, 2015
-The Times of India

MUMBAI: Here's why drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) breeds freely in Mumbai: Patients don't get appropriate medication.

A new study collating information from eight hospitals and treatment centres across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai found patients were given drugs that they were resistant to.

The study, published in PLOS ONE medical journal recently, looked at 340 patients suffering from multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB between 2005 and 2013.

"We found only 29.4% of the patients labeled as MDR-TB were actually MDR-TB patients, who were resistant to only two drugs,'' said Dr Alpa Dalal, a chest medicine specialist attached to the BMC-run Sewri TB Hospital and Jupiter Hospital, Thane.

Worse, more than half the patients were in pre-XDR stage, she said.

As the name suggests, pre-XDR is a stage between MDR-TB and XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant TB) where the patient is resistant to two drugs as well as a type of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones.

"We found 56% of the patients were in the pre-XDR-TB stage but were being given drugs meant for MDR-TB patients," she added.

The study was commissioned to study patterns of resistance to drugs among city's MDR-TB patients. It was a retrospective study of patients from Jupiter Hospital (Thane), Bhatia Hospital (Tardeo), D Y Patil Hospital (Nerul), Fortis Hospital (Mulund), L H Hiranandani Hospital (Powai) and Lilavati Hospital (Bandra) as well as a clinic run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the western suburbs of Mumbai. The only public hospital was the BMC-run Sewri TB Hospital.

BMC's former executive health officer Dr Arun Bamne, a consultant with the Mumbai TB control programme, however said the city didn't have a certified facility to diagnose XDR-TB until three years back.

This meant patients couldn't be easily distinguished from MDR-TB to XDR-TB then. Another public hospital doctor who didn't want to be identified said the study seems too small to be applied to the entire population of patients.

The study showed 80% of the 340 patients enrolled in the study were young and in the 16-35 age bracket. "This group has the highest potential to spread the resistant bug in the population,'' said Dr Dalal. She blamed indiscriminate use of fluoroquinolones to treat viral infections for this growing resistance.

"This tells us that resistance patterns in Mumbai are worse then presumed,'' said Dr Dalal. Clearly, patients are being prescribed drugs without undergoing a proper diagnostic test that would list out drugs they are resistant to.

"Patients should undergo drug-sensitivity tests at the earliest, instead of later when their disease progresses," said Dr Dalal, adding patients deserve "individualized treatment" instead of pre-decided combinations of drugs.

 


The Times of India, 15 February, 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/57-of-TB-patients-given-wrong-drugs/articleshow/46248551.cms


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