Correlations between Gene Resistant Markers and Second-Line Anti-TB Drug Resistance in Pre-XDR and XDR-TB Patients

Abstract

Background: Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is a serious problem in public health and XDR-TB patients usually develop from multi-drug resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and pre-XDR-TB. The rapid molecular test for drug susceptibility testing (DST) can be used for early detection to prevent XDR-TB. Methods: We examined 34 clinical Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) isolates from MDR/XDR-TB patients in the upper north of Thailand that were identified with drug susceptibility profiles by indirect agar proportion method from 2005-2012. Our study investigated the genetic mutations in gyrA for ofloxacin resistance and rrs for kanamycin resistance. The genetic mutations and drug susceptibility test results were analyzed using the exact test. Results: The majority of the ofloxacin resistance was detected in gyrA 21, gyrA 70, gyrA 87, gyrA 102, gyrA 162, and gyrA 187 were at 0%, 12.5%, 37.5%, 0%, 50.0% and 25.0% sensitivity, respectively, and at 96.2, 96.2%, 20.1%, 96.2%, 57.7% and 61.5% specificity, respectively. Kanamycin resistance was found in rrs 512, rrs 241, rrs 223, rrs 414 and rrs 408 at 16.7%, 0%, 0%, 16.7% and 16.7% sensitivity, respectively, and at 96.4%, 92.9%, 82.1%, 82.1% and 71.4% specificity, respectively. This study found no significant correlation between gyrA mutations and ofloxacin resistance and also no correlation between the rrs gene and kanamycin resistance. Conclusion: These primer sequences and PCR products in our study such as gyrA and rrs might be unsuitable to detect ofloxacin and kanamycin resistance in the upper north of Thailand.