Study of primary drug resistance of tubercle bacilli to various antituberculous drugs in Saudi Arabia

This work was conducted on 468 newly diagnosed patients with pulmonary tuberculosis to study the primary drug resistance of tubercle bacilli to various antituberculous drugs in Saudi Arabia. The incidence of primary resistance to different drug combination was 85% with isoniazid [INH] + rifampicin [RMP], 10.63% with INH + streptomycin [SM], 4.27% with SM + ethambutol [EMB], 3.41% with RMP + SM, 1.7% with RMP + EMP and 3.41% with INH + EMB. The incidence of resistance to three drug combination was 0.85% with SMTEMB + INH, 0.42% with RMPTSM + EMB and 0% with RMP + SM + INH and RMP + EMB + INH. The incidence of resistance to four drug combination [RMP + SM + EMB + INH] was zero%