Drug susceptibility profile of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from HIV infected and uninfected pulmonary tuberculosis patients in eastern India.

HIV is driving the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic in many developing countries including India. This study was initiated to determine the drug resistance pattern of pulmonary TB among 200 HIV seropositive and 50 HIV negative hospitalized patients from different states of Eastern India. The TB positive isolates (120) were screened and characterized by conventional laboratory methods followed by first- and second-line drug susceptibility testing on Lowenstein-Jensen medium by the proportion method. The drug susceptibility testing showed 17.7% (16/90) and 6.6% (2/30) multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB for the HIV positive and HIV negative patients, respectively. 22.2% (4/18) of the isolated MDR-TB cases could be classified as extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB isolates. 88.8% (16/18) of all the MDR-TB isolates and all XDR-TB isolates were screened from HIV patients. Five (27.7%) of the 18 MDR-TB isolates showed resistance to all the first-line drugs. Mortality rate among the XDR-TB isolates was as high as 75% (3/4). Patients with interrupted anti-TB drug treatment were the ones most affected. These findings are critical and the risk to public health is high, particularly with HIV infected patients.

Current trends of opportunistic infections among HIV-seropositive patients from Eastern India.

In this report we describe the clinical and laboratory profiles of different opportunistic infections (OIs) among 125 immunocompromised patients admitted to a referral hospital in the eastern part of India. Different pathogens were isolated, identified and characterized using the laboratory gold standard methods. Oral candidiasis (88%) was found to be the most common OI, followed by tuberculosis (57%), enteropathogenic Vibrio (47%), cytomegalovirus infection (45%), cryptosporidial diarrhea (43%), Escherichia coli infection (42%) and other infections among the study subjects. Statistical analysis of the case studies shows 120/cumm median CD4+ blood cell count, and the OIs showed an inversely proportional occurrence to the CD4+ count of the immunocompromised patients. The spectrum and frequency of certain OIs highlight the urgency of studying HIV/AIDS in resource-limited countries where locally specific disease patterns may be observed. The purpose of the present investigation was the identification of such opportunistic pathogens, as we feel the HIV epidemic can be more effectively managed if physicians and health planners are aware of this information.