Abstract
Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains a clinical and public health challenge in Nigeria. This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of M. tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance in patients from five selected health facilities in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. The HIV serostatus and the CD4+ count of seropositive individuals were also determined. Using a combination of Zhiel Neelsen staining and WHO approved GeneXpert MTB/Rif device for M. tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance, the presence of M. tuberculosis in sputum samples was detected and confirmed. A total of 346 samples were analysed, out of which M. tuberculosis was detected in 91 (26.3%) samples and rifampicin resistance in 6 (6.6%) of the positive samples. HIV prevalence was found to be 46.8%, HIV and TB co-infection 39.6%, while 83.3% of the rifampicin resistance was from HIV positive cases. Tuberculosis was found to be decreasing with increase in CD4 count. Statistically, there was a significant relationship (P 0.05) between gender, occupation and age with TB was observed. Our results show that tuberculosis still remains endemic in Nasarawa state with a high prevalence of HIV and that the confluence of HIV and tuberculosis increased the rate of rifampicin resistance. Provision of Tuberculosis diagnostics with the capacity to detect TB drug resistance beyond rifampicin is highly recommended.
Highlights
Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs [1]
The overall prevalence of tuberculosis in the study area was 26.3% with 91 of the 346 samples testing positive for M. tuberculosis as shown in table 1
The highest number of the tuberculosis cases was found among farmers, where 34.1% of those who considered farming as their primary source of income tested positive to TB
Summary
Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs [1]. In 2013, there were an estimated 9.0 million incident cases of Tuberculosis and 1.5 million people died from the disease (1.1 million deaths among people who were HIV-negative and 360 000 among people who were HIV-positive). Among these deaths, there were an estimated 210 000 from multi drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR- TB), a relatively high total compared with 480 000 incident cases of MDR-TB. The African Region had approximately one quarter of the world’s cases, and the highest rates of cases and deaths relative to population, while India and China had the largest number of cases, 24% and 11% of the global total respectively [2]
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