This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Drug Therapy, Other  • Bacterial Infections  • Tuberculosis/ Other Mycobacterium  • Alert me on articles by topic

Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2007;297:1423.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A recent study has found that most cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis among patients undergoing treatment for the disease may reflect new infections, not acquired resistance (Li X et al. J Infect Dis. 2007;195:864-869). The findings run counter to the common belief that drug resistance among treated patients is acquired through mutations in the infecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain.

By genotyping the initial and subsequent drug-resistant clinical isolates of M tuberculosis collected from patients over the course of a 5-year period, investigators at the Shanghai Medical College, in China, found that 84% of patients (27 of 32) had primary drug resistance, indicating transmission of a drug-resistant strain of M tuberculosis. Only 16% (5 of 32) had acquired drug resistance because of a poor treatment regimen or nonadherence to an adequate regimen. Thus, there were more than 5 times as many cases caused by reinfection than by genetic . . . [Full Text of this Article]