CDC: Rise in Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

Federal officials said Thursday tuberculosis strains resistant to drugs have increased over the past decade.

It is critical to take steps now to prevent the further spread of highly-resistant TB, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.

The findings, which appear in the CDC’s journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, are the first global assessment of highly drug-resistant TB.

The survey, which included data from a global network of reference laboratories between 1993 and 2004, found extensively drug-resistant TB or multi-drug resistant TB (resistant to three of the six classes of second-line drugs) in 2 percent of isolates.

Extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR TB, was detected in all regions of the world, including the United States, and now accounts for 15 percent or more of multi-drug-resistant TB cases in South Korea.

Worsening drug resistance worldwide poses a serious threat to our ability to treat and control TB, as treating patients with drug-resistant TB is costly, drugs are toxic and expensive, and patients with XDR TB are virtually untreatable, the CDC said.