Association of Malnutrition with the Prevalence of Tuberculosis (TB) in Married Women

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most life threatening diseases which causes more deaths than any other diseases caused by microbial agents. Every year, additionally 13.7 million infected by TB and more than 1.5 million people die of tuberculosis. Relationship between TB & malnutrition is two-way, tuberculosis takes patient to malnutrition & malnutrition raises the danger of growing active TB by 6 to 10 times. Refining the food of a person significantly decreases TB. Aim of the current study was to evaluate nutritional importance and factors of malnourished subjects amongs TB patients. Methods: Cross-sectional study was executed. 202 female TB patients and those who were on concentrated phase treatment were selected prospectively. A structured questionnaire was used to collect health, lifestyle, socio-economical status, dietary information & hematological profile of the selected TB patients. Clinical information was collected from medical records. Nutritional status was measured as body mass index (BMI) (weight and height) and Complete Blood Count (CBC) with peripheral smear was performed to check anemia using standard techniques. Results: Nutritional status was measured by BMI and categorized as underweight and normal and considered as the primary outcome of the study. Eighty-two (40.6%) TB patients were malnourished (BMI 18.5 kg/m2 and other 31 (15.3%) patients had BMI (25.5 -29.9 kg/m2). 75% of patients showed microcytic type of cells in peripherial smears and 25% patients showed macrocytic type of cells under light microscope, represented iron deficiency anemia and megaloblastic anemia respectively. The overall occurrence of malnourished among tuberculosis patients was 40.6%. Conclusion: A great number of TB patients was malnourished. Tuberculosis patients were tremendously vulnerable to malnutrition and even a very far issue for malnutrition turns into immediate for TB patients.