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  • Bacterial Infections  • Tuberculosis/ Other Mycobacterium  • World Health  • Infectious Diseases  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Rebecca Voelker

JAMA. 2008;300(21):2475.

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

A new study of tuberculosis patients in South Korea is filling in some of the blanks about extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), showing just how much more deadly and difficult to treat it is than TB caused by less-resistant strains (Kim DH et al. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2008;178[10]:1075-1082).

The new findings are based on a review of medical records from 1407 patients who were newly diagnosed or retreated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is caused by isolates resistant to the 2 most effective first-line drugs, isoniazid and rifampin. Only 1.5% of patients were also infected with HIV.

Researchers found that 5.3% of the patients had XDR-TB at the start of treatment. (In addition to resistance to isoniazid and rifampin, XDR-TB isolates are resistant to fluoroquinolones and at least 1 of 3 injectable drugs—amikacin, kanamycin, or capreomycin.)

All of the patients were followed up for 3 . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?