Abstract:
Prevalence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is on the increase in developing countries especially
in Nigeria despite the availability of short course therapy that are inexpensive and effective. This study was
carried out to determine the prevalence of M. tuberculosis in North central Nigeria. A total of 2800 sputum
samples from suspected pulmonary TB patients attending secondary health care facilities across North
central, Nigeria were collected and processed for the presence of M. tuberculosis using Gene Xpert. The
result revealed a prevalence of M. tuberculosis of 13.25% among the studied patients. Patients aged 30-39
years had the highest prevalence of 39.08% with male respondents having 13.88% while females had
12.56%. Also, 20.6% of PTB patients were co-infected HIV. The prevalence of TB was 13.24% and
13.26% among alcoholic consumers and non-alcoholic consumers respectively and 14.2% and 12.8%
among smokers and non-smokers respectively. The importance of education with regard to the occurrence
of PTB in this study shows that respondent with secondary and primary education had the highest
prevalence of 13.6%, followed closely by those with tertiary education (13.4%), the least were participants
with no formal education (12.4%). Base on the quality of sputum as a reservoir for MTB, bloody stained
sputum showed the highest prevalence of 19.90 % of PTB as compare to mucoid showing 12.50 % as the
lowest. The study detected high prevalence of M tuberculosis causing PTB among new cases across the
North Central states of Nigeria, and this could serve as a wakeup call to put more effort and channel
resources that will lead to reduction of the prevalence of PTB.
