NEW YORK, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis could threaten both successful TB therapies and HIV treatment programs, U.S. and South African scientists said.
Researchers at Yeshiva University in New York and their South African partners said the resistant strains of TB were more common than thought in a rural area of South Africa, the university said in a news release. These strains also were associated with high death rates of HIV-infected patients, the university said Thursday.
Neel Gandhi, with Yeshiva's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said researchers tested TB patients for the two strains -- multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis, the university said. Of the 1,539 patients tested, 221 had MDR, and 53 of these patients had XDR, which was higher than previously reported for the area.
The MDR strain of TB is resistant to first-line drug treatment and the XDR strain is resistant to second-line drug treatment that is used when a first-line drug therapy fails, the university said.
Researchers found a greater risk of TB infection in HIV-infected patients, the university said, and the MDR strain was emerging as a major cause of death when the two conditions converged.
