National Tuberculosis Institute validates Hinduja Hospital’s report that 8 infected people are fully drug resistant

MUMBAI: The National Tuberculosis Institute (NTI) in Bangalore has validated Hinduja Hospital’s January report about total drug resistance in eight TB patients. A copy of the report was sent to the state TB department on Monday. “The DOTS-plus (Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse ) team will discuss the re por t on Wednesday,” said state TB officer Dr P Gaikwad. The validation will change little for the patients.“We may change some drugs or injections for some patients,” said a civic official.
In January, in a letter in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal, Hinduja Hospital’s doctors said they had isolated TDR-TB in some of their patients. Three of the original 12 patients who were diagnosed with TDR-TB died. A central team that flew down to Mumbai held that the cases were extra-extensively drug-resistant TB (XXDR-TB ) and not TDR-TB. The Centre granted special funds and status to Mumbai to control TB. Samples of eight of the original 12 patients were sent to NTI for validation. The NTI report confirmed the patients were resistant to all known firstand second-line TB drugs.
BMC officials said that two of these patientswerestillsensitive to one second-line drug. State TB officer Dr Gaikwad said: “This shows that immunity of the host (patient ) also matters, not just the drug sensitivity to the bacteria.”