Background: Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) remains a public health emergency and a threat globally. Although increasing MDR-TB cases have been recently reported in Somalia, limited information is known. This study aims to determine the prevalence of drug-susceptible and MDR-TB in suspected patients referred to the TB Department in Mudug Hospital, Galkayo, Somalia, and identify potential factors associated with MDR-TB.
Methods: A 3-year hospital laboratory-based retrospective study was conducted by manually reviewing laboratory records of Mycobacterium tuberculosis specimens and GeneXpert MTB/RIF results from January 2019 to December 2021 at the reference mycobacteria laboratory department in Mudug Hospital.
Results: A total of 714 positive GeneXpert-MTB results were identified: 619 (86.7%) were drug susceptible (no Rifampin resistance [RR] detected) and 95 (13.3%) with RR detected or defined as MDR-TB. Most of the MDR-TB patients were males (71.6%, 68/95) and between the ages of 15 to 24 (31.6%, 30/95). Most isolates were collected in 2021 (43.2%, 41/95). Multivariate analyses show no significant difference between patients having MDR-TB and/or drug-susceptible TB for all variables.
Conclusion: This study showed an alarming frequency of MDR-TB cases among M. tuberculosis-positive patients at a regional TB reference laboratory in central Somalia.
Copyright: © 2023 Mohamed et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.