Multidrug resistant tuberculosis

Our objectives was to measure the serum zinc level in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis
(MDRTB) patients and explore its association with different predictors of MDRTB in comparison with drug-sensitive tuberculosis (DSTB). We recruited 107 MDRTB and 87 DSTB patients from the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital (NIDCH), Dhaka, in our study. We have used laboratory data on drug resistance patterns of these patients through the line probe assay. About 5 ml overnight fasting blood was collected from each patient to measure serum zinc level through the graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrophotometry method. Multivariate logistic regression in forward LR method was employed to measure the associated factors of MDRTB.
Of them, serum zinc level was found significantly lower in MDRTB patients than DSTB (mean value, 65.1 µg/dl vs. 72.8 µg/dl, p-value<0.001). Younger age (Odds ratio [OR], 0.974; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.951 – 0.997), female gender (OR, 3.480; 95% CI, 1.519-7.972), BCG unvaccinated individuals (OR, 4.814; 95% CI, 2.228-10.400) and reduced level of serum zinc (OR, 0.955; 95% CI, 0.928 – 0.983) were found as the significant predictors for MDRTB.