The long term (9-year) survival of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients compared to non-multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients in Henan province / 中华流行病学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the long term survival of MDR-TB patients compared to non-MDR-TB in Henan province in 2010.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Participants were randomly selected in 2010 from a dataset generated by an anti-TB drug resistance surveillance survey conducted by the Tuberculosis Control Institute, Henan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in 2001, supported by the World Health Organization. Information on patient's demographic profile and medical records was extracted by trained doctors and nurses at local anti-TB dispensaries. Interviews were carried out using questionnaires to collect information on the socioeconomic features and survival status. Bivariate and multivariate with logistic regression were performed for data analysis.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The long term outcome of MDR-TB patients was much poorer when compared to non-MDR-TB patients. The case fatality was much higher among MDR-TB than non-MDR-TB patients (22.1% vs. 6.7%). The risk factors associated with the poorer outcome would include drug resistance status, disease relapse, hospitalization for treatment and long treatment period. Compared to non-MDR-TB, the survival time for MDR-TB was much shorter after having had the disease (6.7 years vs. 8.0 years).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>MDR-TB patients had poor long term outcomes. As most of the cured TB patients were under productive age in the society, the high case fatality rate of MDR-TB would impose big burden on the related family and communities. Findings from this study suggested that the TB control programs should involve more efforts be paid on MDR-TB control, in order to reduce the burden of the disease.</p>

A survey on the infection rate of tuberculosis among employees of the antituberculosis institutions in Henan province, China / 中华流行病学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the situation of tuberculosis (TB) infection among the employees of the anti-TB institutions in Henan.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Cross-sectional study was adopted the employees working in all municipal-level- anti-TB institutions and 40 anti-TB institutions at county-level selected randomly from 109 counties of the province were regarded as surveyed objects. Tuberculin skin test (TST) was used to test the infection with PPD.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>2153 employees accepting the TST and the positive rate was 60.6%, of which the positive rate was 66.1% among healthcare workers. Among the employees and healthcare workers, the positive rates of TST adjusted by the stratum weights between municipal-level and county-level institutions were 57.3% and 62.8% respectively with Chi-square test the analysis of multivariate logistic vegression, both positive rate and strong positive rate among healthcare workers, the employees older than 30 years of age and working in municipal-level institutions were significantly higher than those among non-healthcare workers, the employees younger than 30 years old and working in county-level institutions, respectively. There were not significant differences of positive and strong positive rates between employees with and without BCG-history, or between male employees and female employees.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Program on TB infection control in anti-TB institutions of Henan were weak and the employees especiolly healthcare workers had a high vocational exposure.</p>