Increased prevalence of levofloxacin-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in China is associated with specific mutations within the gyrA gene

The global control of tuberculosis (TB) remains a major challenge due to the epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis, especially multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is resistant to rifampin and isoniazid (Zhao et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2014b). According to recent WHO global estimates, there were 480,000 MDR-TB cases in 2017 (WHO,2018). Almost half of the global MDR-TB cases occurred in China and India (WHO,2018). Due to resistance to both of the most effective antituberculosis drugs, the treatment of MDR-TB requires the use of the less effective and more toxic second-line drugs; approximately half of MDR-TB patients achieve favorable outcomes by the end of prolonged treatment (Velasquez et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2018).
Source: International Journal of Infectious Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Source Type: research