Prevalence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in North Central Nigeria

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.