Epidemiology, risk factors and transmission mechanisms of the emergence of multidrug and extensively drug resistant TB | Social medicine, infectious diseases and migration (SIM)
This multidisciplinary research project addressed microbiological/molecular, clinical and public health aspects of a multi and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (M/XDR). In China M/XDR-TB has reached epidemic proportions and in Sweden, it is seen mainly in certain immigrant populations.
Even more resistant M tuberculosis strains, sometime called totally drug resistant (TDR) threatens to make TB an untreatable disease. Suboptimal therapy increases the risk for development of even more resistant M tuberculosis bacteria in the individual patient as well as the transmission of increasingly drug resistant strains in the community. Scientific multidisciplinary research investigations of the dynamics of increasing drug resistance are important to identify and recommend the needed actions to be taken to control it and to develop the tools necessary to make these actions effective.
Our project focused on these aspects and included the following three parts:
- Disease burden and social determinants;
- Treatment monitoring and optimization;
- Bacteriological and molecular investigations of drug resistance mechanisms.