Prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis and associated factors

Abstract

Objective: to estimate the prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis and associated factors. Methods: a retrospective study that evaluated 74,006 cases of tuberculosis registered in the Notifiable Diseases Information System. In the multivariate analysis, the outcome variable “drug resistance” was used to estimate the prevalence ratio of factors associated with drug resistance. Results: a rate of 0.5% of drug resistance was estimated (n=388). A higher prevalence was observed in cases classified as relapse, post-dropout re-entry, and transfer. There was a 53.0% increase when sputum smear microscopy was positive and a 6.5 increase for positive sputum culture. The opposite effect was observed when the diagnostic test for human immunodeficiency virus was not performed. Conclusion: a low prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis was estimated compared to international scenarios. The main factors associated with the disease were related to retreatments and positive sputum smear and culture results.

Keywords

• tuberculosis; tuberculosis
• multidrug-resistant; nursing; epidemiology; public health.