Incidence of tuberculosis in Spain: results from the Multicenter Project for Tuberculosis Research (MPTR)

BACKGROUND: The objective of this project was to gain a better understandin g of the incidence of all forms of tuberculosis and to describe the clinica l-epidemiological characteristics of tuberculosis cases in Spain. METHODS: After active search through 14 registers, we identified cases of t uberculosis within 13 Spanish Autonomous Communities with populations that represented almost 67% of the total population of Spain. The study period w as between May 1996-April 1997. RESULTS: The global incidence of all forms of tuberculosis was 38.51 cases per 100.000 inhabitants with some variations between the communities (range : 16.20/100,000-70.75/100,000). A positive smear in the sputum was discover ed for 36% of all cases and 49.3% of the cases of pulmonary or miliar tuber culosis. This represented a incidence rate of 13.83 per 100,000 inhabitants (range 4.55/100,000-28.10/100,000). Men presented higher rates of incidenc e than women (52.70/100,000 versus 24.87/100,000). Concerning age groups, 2 5-34 years and 75 or more years were the most affected (61.35/100,000 and 5 9.35/100,000, respectively). The most frequent sites of the disease were pu lmonary, pleural and lymphatic (69.7%, 11.2% and 8.8% respectively) followe d by disseminated forms (6.6%). Tuberculosis patients infected with HIV rep resented 17.7% of the study (range: 7%-27.2%) resulting in a incidence rate of AIDS/tuberculosis of 6.80 per 100,000 inhabitants (range: 2.33/100,000- 8.23/100,000). CONCLUSIONS: The results of the Multicentric Project for Tuberculosis Resea rch (MPTR) confirm the importance of tuberculosis in Spain and shows an imp ortant interaction between tuberculosis and HIV.