High incidence of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Hainan Island, China

Objectives To assess the proportion of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) cases and to identify independent risk factors associated with drug-resistant TB in Hainan. Methods Descriptive analysis of demographic and clinical data of culture-positive TB patients to assess the trends in drug-resistant TB at the Provincial Clinical Center on Tuberculosis of Hainan between 2014 and 2017. Results 994 patients were recruited into the study. Overall, the proportion of patients resistant to at least one TB drug tested was 36.1% (359/994). The most frequent resistance was to isoniazid (INH, 29.8%), followed by rifampin (RIF, 29.3%), streptomycin (19.3%), ofloxacin (OFX, 17.4%), ethambutol (9.5%) and kanamycin (KAN, 3.2%). Of 291 RIF-resistant isolates, 228 (78.4%) were also resistant to INH, while the remaining 63 (21.6%) were susceptible to INH. Among those with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), 41.2% had additional resistance to OFX and 3.9% to KAN. 8.8% of MDR-TB patients were affected by extensively drug-resistant (XDR-TB). Females were more likely to infected with MDR-TB than males, and young people ( Conclusions Our data provide the first primary understanding of the drug-resistant TB epidemic in Hainan. The high incidence of drug resistance, especially RIF and FQ resistance, highlight the importance of interventions for preventing epidemics of drug-resistant TB. Younger age is an independent predictor of MDR-TB, reflecting the potential transmission in this population.