Assessment of the prevalence of rifampicin, isoniazid, fluoroquinolone, cyclic peptide and kanamycin resistance among the pulmonary tuberculosis patients using the line probe assay

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading infectious disease globally that has claimed several lives due to emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis. This study is aimed at the assessment pulmonary tuberculosis using probe assay in River State. Three Hundred and Forty Eight (348) sputum samples were collected from patients attending clinic in University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. Samples were received and analyzed in south-south tuberculosis reference laboratory. Molecular analysis of the sample were done with line probe assay. The results shows that TB prevalence was 62.6% among the presumptive TB patients. Rifampicin resistance was 57.2%, isoniazid resistance was 29.0%, fluoroquinolone was 9.2%, cyclic peptide was 7.2% and kanamycin was 1.4%. Drug resistant TB (DRTB) was 21.0%, Multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) was 21.3% and extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) was 15.2%. The results further showed that there was no association between age and DR-TB (p=0.18) and MDR-TB (p=0.25) but there was a significant relationship between age and XDR-TB (p=0.00). The results also showed that there was no association between gender and DR-TB (p=0.18), MDR-TB (p=0.25) and XDR-TB (p=0.38). This study has revealed that using the line probe assay, the prevalence of TB in UPTH is not only high, but the resistant trends are high with rifampicin being the leading resistant drug while age was the only identified sociodemographic factor that affects XDR-TB rate.