ANTI-TUBERCULOUS INITIAL-DRUG RESISTANCE OF MYCOBACTERIUM-TUBERCULOSIS IN KENYA - A 10-YEAR REVIEW

Our experience at the Respiratory Diseases Research Unit (RDRU), over the last 10 years (1981-1990) on the initial drug resistance pattern, focusing on three drugs viz: isoniazid (H), streptomycin (S) and rifam picin (R) is presented. Records on all isolates of M. tuberculosis fro m one specimen of every newly diagnosed patient recruited countrywide, between 1981-1990 were reviewed. We analyzed records of 6,514 isolates and found that total resistance to the three drugs had increased from 8.9% to 14.4%. Resistance to H alone increased from 6.8% to 10.2% whi le that of S alone from 0.8% to 1.8%. Resistance to R was between 0.1% and 0.3%. Generally, the increase in the resistance trend to both H a nd S was statistically significant (p=<0.05 and 0.03, respectively). A lthough in our analysis we did not address the possible impact of HIV infection, we hope that these findings form a basis for evaluation of this and other possible factors on the emergence of anti-TB drug resis tance in future studies.